Italy World Cup winning coach Marcelo Lippi sympathised with England manager Fabio Capello on Monday, claiming he doesn't have enough good players to choose from.

While English clubs supplied three of the four Champions League semi-finalists this season, the national team failed to qualify for the Euro 2008 finals in Austria and Switzerland in June.

England finished below Croatia and Russia in their group, losing three of their four matches against those two principal rivals.

"The problems for a coach happens when he doesn't have many good players at his disposal," said Lippi at a coaching conference in Florence.

"Capello for example has more problems fielding a strong English national team because only 38 percent of Premier League players are British."

Lippi has been out of work since guiding Italy, then in disarray due to the Serie A match-fixing scandal, to their fourth World Cup triumph in Germany in 2006.

He is rumoured to be looking for a return to top level football, although he claimed he has no concrete propositions.

(Agencis via China Daily April 30, 2008)