Posts Tagged ‘Ferran Soriano’

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Pep Guardiola is, possibly, going to achieve his short-term targets at Manchester City this season. If he can win the Premier League which, in actual fact, is now his to lose, and win the Champion’s League, then it will be job done.

Will he then still be motivated to try and repeat the feat whilst adding maybe the Super Cup and an FA Cup or two over the next couple of seasons? Maybe, maybe not.

At Barcelona, once he felt he had taken the team as far as he could he became bored. He wanted a fresh challenge and went to Bayern Münich where, compared with the previous manager who had won the treble, he actually failed. (more…)

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Is José Mourinho just flirting with PSG in order to get some attention from his current employers? It is reported that he has asked for a “massive” pay rise, whatever that is, in order to sign a new and extended contract with United and he could be using the fact that he is still able to command the top jobs in European football as leverage to get it.

He could also be seriously contemplating taking the PSG job, either at the end of this contract or the next one.

United fans need to remember that, for Mourinho, this may be his biggest job to date, but it is still just another in the line of big jobs he has already undertaken and doesn’t necessarily mean he is at the end of his nomadic wanderings. (more…)

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Reportedly the most coveted coach in the world, Pep Guardiola enjoyed a successful career as a player at Barcelona and then went on to have a very successful career as their manager.

He surprised a lot of people by choosing to leave the club at the height of their success, citing the need to prove to himself that he could achieve the same levels elsewhere.

He then surprised even more people by opting to go to Germany to become the new manager of Bayern Munich. What was particularly surprising about this move was that he was following a manager who had just won the treble of Bundesliga title, German Cup and Champion’s League. Jupp Heynckes was going to be almost impossible to follow and so it turned out. Pep was successful but, at the time of writing, hadn’t been able to win the Champion’s League and neither, therefore, the treble.

It was no great surprise when he announced that he would be leaving Bayern Munich as he wanted to manage in the English Premier League. I think he found managing Bayern relatively easy and it appeared that they had even less competition in the Bundesliga than Barcelona had in La Liga during his time there. It did not turn out to be the challenge he expected and must have been quite boring, even for him, to know that, barring miracles being bestowed upon other clubs, Bayern Munich would have the league wrapped up by around Christmas. (more…)

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(Pep responds with a well-known gesture when asked why he would want to coach Manchester City!)

The leading candidates, in no particular order, are:

Chelsea – Guus Hiddink

Having fired Jose Mourinho for being unable to get the same players to do the same things for two years running, Roman Abramovich has appointed Guus Hiddink until the end of the season.

Now, it could be that Guus does very well and gets Chelsea into the top four, wins the FA Cup, the Champions League and becomes fluent in Russian so he can tell Roman all about it. It will matter not a jot should Guardiola decide that his future lies in West London. This being the case, Hiddink will be jettisoned quicker than a human cannonball, allowing him to retire and spend his days fishing in the flatness of Holland.

Guardiola will not, however, decide that his future lies in West London.

Arsenal – Arsene Wenger

Now in his twentieth year at Arsenal, there will be some gooners who are secretly hoping that it is his last. They want him booted upstairs in some kind of director role and they would absolutely love it, Kevin Keegan-style, if he was replaced by Pep Guardiola. (more…)

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Carlo Ancelotti is going to Bayern Munich where, after succeeding as usual, he will be fired as usual. He will probably win the treble but, because he is cursed, he will still be fired.

At two of his previous clubs he has a record which most managers would be proud to have. He was fired from his job as Chelsea manager having won the League and FA Cup double and, at Real Madrid, he was fired having won the Champion’s League. So he could be considered either a trifle unlucky or a loser for only winning the top trophies and none of the lesser ones.

Sympathy is not a feeling too much in evidence when it comes to highly paid football managers losing their job. Particularly when you consider that the top ones will almost certainly walk straight into another one.

So what will be the chain of events this time, I don’t hear you ask? (more…)