WHEN a man who’s never failed tastes defeat for the first time, is it because he has lost his magic touch or because the challenge was too great?

Before he arrived in England, Fabio Capello was an almost absurdly successful football manager.

He won seven Italian titles with AC Milan, Roma and Juventus. Capello also took the Spanish championship twice. Not bad considering he only spent two seasons in the country.

And his great Milan side of the 1990s crushed Barcelona 4-0 in one of the most one-sided European Cup finals ever.

He is, I think we can all agree, someone who knows a thing or two about winning football games.

And yet his time at England has ended in failure. Capello’s team sailed through qualifying for the last World Cup but then played like strangers when they got to South Africa.

After scraping through a relatively simple group, England were crushed 4-1 by Germany in the second round.

In Capello’s four years in charge, England played a competitive match against top-class opposition just once – and the result was embarrassing.

After another simple qualification, the Italian last week walked out ahead of this summer’s European Championships.

Apparently Capello left because he disagreed with the FA’s decision to strip John Terry of the England captaincy while the Chelsea man awaits a court case for a racism charge which he denies.

Since quitting last week, the Italian has been written-off as a failure.

But there is another way of looking at his time as England coach – though it won’t provide much comfort to the next poor sap who takes on the impossible job.

Capello was a man who never failed and yet he failed with England. Even for one of the world’s best managers, the challenge was beyond him.

Maybe that’s not because the Italian suddenly became a bad coach. Perhaps it’s just that England’s top players simply aren’t good enough to succeed, no matter who manages them.