Gerrard keen on captaincy
Steven Gerrard has admitted he would be honoured to be appointed Fabio Capello's England captain.
Capello is preparing his side for the friendly international against Switzerland at Wembley on Wednesday, his first game at the helm since replacing Steve McClaren.
The Italian tactician has announced that he will not name a full-time skipper until the World Cup qualification campaign begins in September
And with regular captain John Terry not included in the squad through injury, the likes of Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, Wayne Rooney and Michael Owen have a chance to stake their claim.
Respect
Gerrard told Sky Sports News: "It would be a great honour. I think we've got to respect the fact that John Terry is still our captain, so until that changes John is still our leader.
"But he's not involved for the next game, so we'll have to wait and see who the manager goes with.
"It would be very nice, but until the manager makes that decision I don't want to say too much about it."
Gerrard is relishing making a fresh start under Capello after the disappointment of the McClaren era, which ended in failure to qualify for Euro 2008.
He said: "We had a quick meeting and he told us it's a fresh start for everyone. He wants a winning mentality around the place, he wants to build a winning team and he wants all the players pulling in the right direction to achieve that.
The manager told us that he's watched us a lot of times and he thinks we can improve defensively and going forward.
"Everyone's nervous because he's a new manager and we don't know much about him and he doesn't know much about us personally, so it's going to take time.
"But there's certainly excitement. He's a very good manager. As a player you want to work with the best and the FA have certainly employed one of the best managers in the world."
Surprised
Gerrard was also impressed by Capello's grasp of the English language in their first training session, with critics of the Italian's appointment pointing to his lack of fluency.
The Liverpool midfielder said: "It was all in English. It surprised me actually, because a lot of people had been talking about how his English is, but surprisingly he was really good.
"All the session was put across to the players in English. He got slight help from a translator of course, but all of his other staff's English is quite good as well, so it was better than I thought."
And Gerrard has backed David Beckham to bounce back from the disappointment of being left out of Capello's first squad to go on and win his 100th cap.
He said: "The manager's decided not to pick David this time, but I'm sure once David is back playing football on a regular basis he can prove to the manager he's still capable of playing well.
"That's the manager's decision. Everyone's talking about the 99 caps. David's got to get back to playing football, play well, and then I'm sure the 100th cap will come.
There's a new manager in charge, he's the boss, he makes the decisions, so all the players go along with it."
|
Linear Mode
