Profile: Fabio Capello: Absolutely Fabio

A coach as successful and as anglophile as Jos Mourinho, he mixes the personal reticence of Sir Alf Ramsey with the relentless will to win of Sir Alex Ferguson.

Unlike Eriksson, Capello is a man apart from his players. This is a man who met his wife Laura at the age of 17 on a bus, who courted her for six years and refused to move in with her until they were married. As a professional player he was at home and in bed with his wife by 9:30 every evening; as a manager he is reputed to ring her five times a day. He despises Wags because "they're all the same – adjusted here, puffed up there, interchangeable and false. I like classy women: Virna Lisi, Catherine Deneuve".

Capello may love his wife and two sons, he may ring his mother every day, and he may have paid for the upkeep of the bell-tower in his family church, Sant'Andrea Apostolo, but he can be a stern, unknowable man. "Capello has a closed personality," said former Italy and Juventus teammate Marco Tardelli. "I'm not saying you couldn't talk to him at all. Perhaps if you had a very important question to ask, you could ask it, and he would answer. But mostly he was closed."

If Capello comes across as being in control, restrained and somehow very un-Italian, it's partly nature, but largely nurture. He grew up in the Gorizia region of north-eastern Italy, on the border with Slovenia. It's an area that was almost absorbed into Yugoslavia at the end of the war, a place where Italian patriotism runs deep, but alongside it, a dour borders mentality. That atmosphere of stoicism was bolstered by his father Guerrino, a teacher who survived six hellish months in a German prisoner of war camp only by burning and eating roots. Weighing six stones when he returned home, on their hunting trips in the mountains he would drum self-reliance into his son. "In the region where I was born," Capello once said, "we are really straight, really strong people. We have to work, work, work, to be correct in every moment. Big discipline. This is very important. And my father was a really good father, and respect was the most important thing. He told me, 'Fabio, you have to remember, you have to be always the single man, not a group man. Not like a lamb. Always'."

Capello's sense of control and self-denial have always been the key to his character. It's why England players are not allowed mobile phones, while flip-flops are banned and a strict dress-code enforced. On the only occasion when he has talked about his private credo, he revealed that: "I pray twice a day. I am not keen on the current abortion law. And I admire Pope Benedict. As far as I am concerned, the Church needed a tug in the direction of greater respect for tradition."

That respect for tradition hasn't always been welcome: when with Real Madrid he outraged many Spaniards by praising General Franco for his "legacy of order", while suggesting that his compatriots "follow their example". Yet his insistence on respect and his controlling tendencies can sometimes verge on maniacal. In his pomp as AC Milan manager, he would only travel on seats 3A or 4A on flights, demanded to be the last person on the bus and banned his staff from writing in red ink. And then there's bizarre phobia involving ankle socks: "I can't stand them – when a man crosses his legs and the trouser leg rides up to show the hairy shins, it offends my eyes."

Yet, whatever his personal foibles, the football comes first because, despite all the evidence to the contrary, England still expects. That's why the men in suits broke the bank to get Capello, paying 6 million a year that they don't have to get their man, which equates to a smidgeon under 20,000 per day. But then the man in question is a born winner, someone who has succeeded at every level, whether as a coach or a player.

A tenacious yet cultured midfielder, after spells at Spal and Roma he won three Serie A titles with Juventus and one with AC Milan, and scored the 1973 goal for Italy that brought about the Azzurri's first ever win over England at Wembley. Yet his teammates don't remember the stats, they remember a man who was quite out of the ordinary. Goalkeeper Dino Zoff, a close friend and colleague for club and country, used to call Capello "the surveyor" because "he understood all the angles and diagonals".

Legendary Italian defender Franco Baresi said that as a player, Capello "was like a policeman directing traffic". Giovan Battista Fabbri, who was his first professional coach at Spal, paints a portrait that England's players may well recognise. "From day one, he told his team-mates what to do, how to move, where to go. It's a clich, but even as a kid he was a manager on the pitch. He had ability, but also a confidence and a poise you rarely see. He wasn't afraid to make himself heard. He'd often tell me, his boss, what to do. Always politely, of course, but firmly."

Throughout his career, Capello was troubled by a dodgy left knee, but like so many of the managers who retire prematurely as players, he found his vocation as a coach and manager. His instinctive disciplinarian tendencies ("I think he would have made a good prison guard," said former Italian winger Roberto Donadoni) and acute understanding of the game meshed to produce a manager who would eclipse anything he achieved as a player. He has won league titles with all four of the clubs he has been at – AC Milan, Real Madrid, Roma and Juventus – and his nine league titles in 16 years are a remarkable achievement.

An alpha male who must be in command, Capello is also a complex and intelligent man. He is well-read (he has a copy of Machiavelli's The Prince on his bedside table) and a discerning collector of modern art whose collection is worth 17m and who is a astute student of his favourite painter, Kandinsky.

Yet for all his talents, Capello isn't above either hubris or leaving hostages to fortune. As he once said: "People say I'm impatient when it comes to football and they're right. I can't stand the crap that gets talked by everyone: players, fans, the media, club officials. Why should I waste my time listening to people who are clearly less intelligent than me?"

That sounds like pride. And we all know what pride comes before, especially if you're the manager of England.