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World Cup 2010

Former FA chief executive Brian Barwick is convinced Fabio Capello can do the job he hired him to do and win the World Cup for England.

It is almost 12 months since Barwick stood down from a post he had held for four of the most turbulent years the FA has ever gone through.

In that short space of time he launched the Respect campaign, negotiated an improved TV deal with ITV and Setanta - which has since collapsed due to the latter station's collapse - oversaw the move into Wembley Stadium, backed the 2018 World Cup bid and could not manage to force through the controversial scheme for a centre of coaching excellence.

But, above all that, Barwick, now an advisor and media consultant and recently appointed chairman of Cheshire-based soccer development firm, Kickworldwide, is most famous for appointing two England coaches.

The first, Steve McClaren, turned out to be a failure. The second could prove to be the biggest success since Sir Alf Ramsey.

Barwick told Press Association Sport: "It is the question posed more than any other: 'Will England win the World Cup?'

"I always felt we were one of the nations who had a chance. I still think that position stands.

"We are not just winning now, we are winning with style.

"We will go to South Africa, fitness and form permitting, with a strong chance of doing very well."

And for that situation alone, England have Capello to thank and, indirectly, Barwick too given he learned from the tortuous and at times unedifying search for Sven-Goran Eriksson's successor to ensure the same dragged-out process did not occur when McClaren was dumped.

"We listened to a lot of people and four or five names kept coming through as possibilities," he said.

"But Fabio Capello had made it known he wanted the job. He wanted to crown his career and saw it as the biggest job in world football.

"He was the only person I actually met."

It did not take long for the pair to develop a friendship that still endures to this day.

Barwick could see instantly Capello had the drive, focus and determination to make a go of what some pundits argued was an impossible job: taming the media and managing expectations while at the same time putting a winning team on the pitch.

"I am thrilled for him because he is such a focused, hard-working, inspirational and tough leader," said Barwick.

"You know when he has his match head on and if you engage him in conversation, you feel obligated to him.

"He is a great lover of classical music, art and museums. The last game we played with me in the role was in Berlin.

"On the morning of the game I was walking around the hotel at around 10am and Fabio asked me what I was going to do with the rest of the day.

"When I shrugged he instantly wrote down five museums and told me to go see them all.

"It is not really my thing but I went to one of them just so I could tell him I had been.

"When I couldn't answer his questions about the other four later he just rolled his eyes."

Barwick's perspective is more detached now, even if his successor Ian Watmore was the first to shake his hand after qualification had been achieved.

But he invested too much time recruiting Capello to abandon him as he approaches his date with destiny, having famously laid down the minimum requirement of a semi-final place in a wide-ranging review on the whole organisation in a four-year strategic vision released in May 2008.

"The point about the template is that if you don't put anything down you get hammered. If you do, you make yourself a hostage to fortune," he said.

"That is the world in which the FA lives."