This time English Football Association chief Brian Barwick has got it right with his choice of Fabio Capello as the next England manager.
Barwick of course was the same man responsible for the disastrous appointment of Steve McClaren as England coach when the FA - under pressure from the English media - decided to go with a homegrown coach again after the outcry that followed the appointment of McClaren's predecessor, Swede Sven Goran-Erikkson - the country's first foreign manager.
Never mind that Erikkson led England to three successive quarter-final appearances at major tournaments - the 2002 and 2006 World Cups and the 2004 European Championships - and came as close as anyone else to ending a trophy drought stretching back to the 1966 World Cup.
After the failed reign of McClaren - who couldn't even get England to qualify for next year's Euro 2008 finals in Austria and Switzerland - the FA has finally learned that a person's nationality should not be a factor when it comes to deciding who should be in charge of the national team.
Even the normally parochial English press has conceded there are just no British candidates of sufficient experience and the right pedigree to be given the highest-profile sporting job in the country.
And even those that could have been a chance, such as highly-regarded West Ham manager Alan Curbishley and Aston Villa's Northern Irish manager Martin O'Neill, ruled themselves out of contention and who could blame them after being overlooked in favour of McClaren the last time around.
Whereas the last time the FA appointed a man whose resume consisted solely of winning the League Cup at Middlesbrough and having been Erikkson's number two - with McClaren only winning the job because he was perceived to be the best English candidate available - this time the FA has simply got the best qualified candidate full stop.
In Capello the FA have gone for a proven winner and a man who at 61, and with years of experience behind him at some of the world's biggest clubs such as Italy's AC Milan and Juventus and Spain's Real Madrid, is hardly likely to be daunted by the incredible public demands that come with the job.
In 16 years as a coach at the highest level of club football in Europe - Capello has landed nine titles and won the biggest club prize of all, the European Champions' League in 1994 with Milan.
And Capello has proven that he can be successful not just with traditionally powerful clubs such as Milan and Real Madrid but also with clubs that don't have such a proud history such as Italian Serie A outfit Roma.
In 2001 Capello steered Roma to the title ahead of the likes of Milan, Inter and Juventus for what was only the third 'Scudetto' in the club's history.
And that should give all English football fans encouragement because after all few teams have as long a losing history as England's national team which has failed to add to its sole success on home soil in 1966 despite having the world's richest league and players of the quality of David Beckham, Michael Owen, Wayne Rooney, Steven Gerrard, Rio Ferdinand, John Terry and Frank Lampard as fixtures in the team over the past decade.
If Capello can't fix the problems besetting English football then no-one can.
And let's just hope those notorious parochial Englishmen give the smooth Italian a fair go and accept that for at least in the foreseeable future there is no-one qualified enough within their ranks to deliver the kind of success on a national level the country has been craving for nearly half a century.