The mysterious breed of a football manager

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An insight into the harsh reality that is football management.

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Veni. Vidi. Vici.  The famous words of Roman emperor Julius Caesar as his vast armies swept across Europe engulfing all that he cast his eyes upon. Caesar carried the Roman domination from the very forefront, leading by example and suppressing anyone that stood in his way. A dictator of great respect and true power, he commanded millions as they performed his tactical brilliance time after time. He came, he saw, he conquered. If Caesar was on the football scene, he would be the real ‘special one.’

Real Madrid steadily ponder between victories against a majority of reasonably decent Spanish teams who pose no real threats, before almost inevitably being humiliated at the hands of Barcelona in derby games. The constant arrogance and insolence of the egotistical Jose Mourinho leaves me to take a deep breath, sigh and exclaim, “Mourinho, I just don’t care anymore.”

He is a manager that can crawl under the skin of the best of us and no doubt it was believed to be an ingenious ploy when the tactician turned his attention to destroying the Barcelona team from inside out, slowly defragmenting the solidity of Pep Guardiola’s squad. Unfortunately for Mourinho, Barcelona did their talking on the football pitch as Real Madrid melted away in their attempts to break the strong unity of the Catalonians and successfully failed in their strategies to tame Barcelona’s key element; Lionel Messi. Finally, Mourinho was left slightly speechless which was more than enough satisfaction for me; if only Madrid could face Barcelona every game of the season.

On the contrary in managerial styles lies a mumbling, fumbling, timid Italian counterpart of the great Caesar; Fabio Capello. I would thoroughly enjoy Julius Caesar’s take on the highly complicated 4-4-2 formation that took Mr. Capello and England a good few years to finally suss. And, by suss, I hereby mean to the extent of an abysmal World Cup display, and the frustrating Euro 2012 qualifying campaign.

Maybe the worst is all behind us. There is no denying that taking the responsibilities as England manager is a tedious, high pressurised vault of inevitable failure, but nonetheless, we still expect the job to be done well. So, when performances are anything less than utterly superb, our nation roars furiously, directing its hatred via the accurate blaming finger of the media. There have been surveys to find ‘Britain’s most disliked personnel’ and the likes of Katie Price and Gordon Brown were unsurprising victors of the illustrious award, but it was poor Capello who sat in third place. With the media at the helm we are but sheep following one another who need an outcast to blame, so pretty please TV, newspapers and radio, point us in any sort of direction so that we can follow your warpath.

Liam Curtis

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