Claudio Ranieri cut an emotional figure yesterday as he tried to avoid the press looking for safety at his modest home. There has been a massive amount of punditry over Leicester City's decision, but if you read the insider reports you could understand why the club decided to pull Claudio's plug.
David Moyes' Sunderland have lost to old club Everton and his Black Cats have desperate luck, as Defoe hits the bar, ball bounces down to the line, no goal, the ball gets to Lukaku and the ball takes a deflection into the net. When you are down, you are down.
Many of our managers are under the microscope; maybe it is the time of the season?
On February 21st 1995, George Graham left Arsenal following a bungs' scandal involving him, the Gunners' manager, Head Coach, Steve Burtenshaw and a Norwegian agent called Rune Hauge who paid money into Burtenshaw's bank acount in Ireland.
Eventually after Scandinavians, Anders Limpar (Sweden), Pal Lydersen Norway) and John Jensen (Denmark) had signed for the club, the payments had been made. The accused Graham, claimed that the money was a gift to him and made payments back to Arsenal as a gesture, denying any wrong doing. Burtenshaw claimed he was being paid for his scouting network, a job not associated with Arsenal. The club accepted their claims but since the FA was on their case, they were dismissed and Graham ended up at Leeds.
On February 22nd 1991 Kenny Dalglish resigned as Liverpool manager. Although Liverpool was in a healthy position, top of the league and into the sixth round of the FA Cup, their form was not convincing, having only won two league games out of seven. Liverpool then lost to Everton in the cup and eventually lost the league title to Arsenal. To add to his woes, Dalglish had gone to every funeral following the Hillsborough disaster and we cannot account for the impact this had on his life.
As it was Graham Souness got the call to take over.
On February 24th 1964, Italy's first "international" manager, Willy Garbutt died, aged 81. He had been a player at Reading, Stockport Woolwich Arsenal and Blackburn Rovers but moved to Genoa (known as the most English town in Italy) in 1912, aged 29. He had been "spotted" by an Italian football coach, Vittorio Pozzo, Italy's coach in two World Cup, who brought Willy to Genoa CFC, where he had considerable success, introducing English training methods. Willy introduced warm ups, physical fitness, tactics, hot showers, legal transfers, eradicated "bungs" and took his team on tour to Reading.
He returned to England during the First World War to fight, survived and then led Genoa to success in the Italian League in the 1920s, formed a new club called AC Roma, coached at Napoli and Atletico Bilbao (in Spain!!) in 1935 and returned to AC Milan.
He went back to Genoa in 1938, had to "hide" during the Fascist uprising, his wife was killed by allied bombing during the war, he went back to Genoa after the war (until 1948). He returned to England in 1951, lived in obscurity in Leamington Spa and his death was fully covered in the Italian press and raised hardly a murmur in England.
No comments:
Post a Comment