Fabio Capello, the Italian manager of the England football team, will face one of the biggest challenges of his life, and intense media scrutiny, during the football World Cup in South Africa later this year.
Fabio Capello in a more vocal moment
So who is the real Fabio Capello?
And what qualified him to become the England manager?
He had, of course, been a successful player and coach. But Brian Barwick, who, as the then chief executive of the Football Association hired Capello, knew what else he was looking for:
"We needed the best man for the job. Shortly after we had not qualified [for the Euro 2008 tournament], I ripped a piece of paper from a pad and wrote down what I thought the template for the next England manager would be.
New austerity
"I wrote down 'world class, strong personality, experienced, used to handling big players and big matches, tactically adaptable, international club or country pedigree, mature individual'. And if you put all those things together you get Fabio Capello."
Capello characteristically had his own ideas about why he should be given the job. He came to Wembley armed with advisers and a PowerPoint presentation, proposing root and branch change in English national football.
A deal was done, including a multi-million pound annual salary, and then they announced the appointment.
Capello's style was immediately different from that of his predecessors. For a start, he did not yet speak fluent English when he took the job.
He also chose to call the players by their surnames rather than their first names, let alone their nicknames.
He insisted on punctuality, banned mobile phones at team meals, and demanded more time away from the famous wives and girlfriends - or "Wags" as they have become known. Overall, a much more austere approach.
Ed Smith, former England cricketer and author of What Sport Tells Us About Life, sees Capello as the headmaster on the touchline, the somewhat distant man of few words.
"He strikes me as being very headmasterly and it is interesting that his father was a school teacher. He is slightly scary, slightly standoff-ish, a totally safe pair of hands, someone whom you instantly respect before he has done anything and are instantly wary of crossing."
Like father like son
David Beckham, who has played under Capello both at Real Madrid and for England, says the manager's "scary" personality has been key to England's rejuvenation.
"He's brought a real seriousness, a professional side which was needed. He scares you - in a 'respect' way," he told the BBC.
Capello grew up near Italy's border with Slovenia. He was born in 1946 in a rural region that had been ravaged by the Second World War and was still full of tension.
His father had arrived home after suffering in German prison camps following the Italian army's withdrawal from its alliance with Germany during the war.
Capello met his wife, Laura, on a bus when they were teenagers
Gabriele Marcotti, Fabio Capello's biographer, says Capello senior "was a very organised man who believed in discipline and routines. Fabio was very receptive to this. It was a remarkable relationship he had with his father where, until his father passed away in the 1980s, they would write to each other twice a week, even at a time when there were telephones."
The young Capello, who had inherited his father's self-discipline, rapidly made his mark as a professional footballer in Italy. He was famous for his ability to read a game and direct tactics on the pitch.
He played for the Italian national team, notably against England at Wembley in 1973.
Bohemian
After retiring as a player, Capello managed top clubs in Italy and Spain with considerable success, dealing with owners including Silvio Berlusconi, and famous players whose egos he was not afraid to challenge. But he was always ready to switch jobs when new opportunities arrived.
And as soon as a match or a training session was over, he was ready to switch into a different world.
Gabriele Marcotti discovered, for example, the company Capello kept when he was a manager in Rome.
"He fell into this circle which included poets and artists. They used to meet in this restaurant in the San Lorenzo arty neighbourhood in Rome, and they would while away afternoons with bohemians and artists.
"One guy was a card counter in a casino, another a homeless artist living in a squat, and they would all sit down and they would taste different productions of olive oil with Capello. This was Capello's bohemian period."
Music and art
All but two of Capello's friends are said to be from outside football.
Brian Barwick knows that, for example, "one of Capello's best mates is a Russian conductor and he quite often goes off to Moscow to listen to his work and then the Russian conductor comes over to watch Fabio's work."
He met his wife Laura when they were teenagers. They have been married for over 40 years and have two sons, one of whom is also Capello's agent.
He has also been a passionate collector of art from when he was still a player. He liked the Arte Povera movement, which creates works of art out of rubbish or discarded material. He admired its "spirit", he says - a favourite Capello word.
His holidays, meanwhile, were often spent visiting archaeological sites.
He is also a fan of museums.
Brian Barwick remembers how he once clearly failed to impress Capello, when he visited only one of five museums Capello had recommended in Berlin, on the day of an evening match against Germany. Barwick laughs at the memory that when he admitted to only going to see one of the museums, "Capello just looked at me".
The tabloids' reverence for the man of culture will not last if his team starts to lose. That is when a manager is truly tested, when he stands helplessly on the touchline trying to preserve his dignity while his plans fall apart.
If England do flop in South Africa, Capello's aura of authority and his lofty distance from the media will be much harder to sustain.
One-Minute World News 
E-mail this to a friend 
Printable version 
BBC News
Bookmark with:
What are these?