Xavi fancies a Premier League job but his conditions appear...unrealistic. Some managers are only on here for now...
Managergeddon has extended beyond the end of the football season, with Liverpool realising Arne Slot was not the man they or we all assumed he was after sauntering to the title in his first Premier League season.
One p*ss-poor title defence later, he’s gone and takes his place in this list behind Xavi and, for now at least, Enzo Maresca.
Until the worst kept secret in football is confirmed, anyway.
10) Thomas Frank
Frank failed to galvanise Tottenham and, frankly, his record was wretched, the Dane leaving with the worst win ratio of any permanent Spurs boss. But, lads, it’s Tottenham. That has to be factored in when we consider where his sacking leaves his reputation,
After a break, we can well imagine that he will still be a man in demand – albeit not quite ‘the most in-demand in world football’ as one starry-eyed journalist insists – even if his struggle to replicate his Brentford success at Spurs highlights once more the danger of plucking a manager from an analytics-driven club and expecting him to have the same effect. Fulham could be interested but maybe Frank might fancy a stint abroad.
9) Ruben Amorim
It feels a fair placement – just below the manager Amorim lost the Europa League final to and who has promptly been sacked twice.
Just over a year at Manchester United has been a remarkably chastening experience for the Portuguese, who lost almost as many games as he won, spent hundreds of millions and wedded himself so damagingly to a system and approach which simply never worked. United’s vast and immediate improvement after his exit is damning.
But Amorim will be back. This has hurt but not decimated the stock he built at Sporting and the 40-year-old can point to either myriad lessons learned at Old Trafford in his first job of such magnitude, or how Manchester United is toxic and turns basically everyone to some shade of shite or another.
8) Ange Postecoglou
Despite being sacked by Tottenham, Big Ange’s stock was still high having made good on his second-season-silverware promise. So it always seemed a weird marriage with Evangelos Marinakis, not a man renowned for patience, but an annulment on day 39 was fast even for the Forest owner.
Where does that leave Postecoglou now? Probably looking abroad, unless Celtic fancy another ride on the Ange train. It would have been fun to see him go back in at Spurs.
7) Oliver Glasner
Delivering to Crystal Palace their first major trophies has made everyone forget some of the unpleasantness in between the FA Cup and Europa Conference League, leaving Glasner and the Eagles to part on good terms while his stock remains high.
The Austrian was reported to be ready for talks with Bayer Leverkusen, but the AC Milan vacancy seems to be the most attractive right now. From Selhurst to the San Siro?
6) Antonio Conte
Conte did at Napoli what Conte does: win and wave goodbye.
The Italian won the Serie A title in his first season in Naples before finishing second and adding the Italian Super Cup to his trophy collection.
What next? There are said to be offers from Saudi and Turkey, while Conte remains towards the top of the list of candidates to take over the Italy national team.
5) Arne Slot
One of only two men to win the Premier League title with Liverpool, but while he proved magnificently adept at smoothing the edges of someone’s else’s team he was all at sea when it came to building his own.
A season of drift at Liverpool has eventually cost him his job, although the dilly-dallying has seen the Reds miss out on their obvious top target and previous holder of the No. 1 spot here.
4) Enzo Maresca
A literal world champion manager at Chelsea and soon-to-be confirmed as Man City manager and thus at serious risk of being cast as the David Moyes to Pep’s Sir Ferg.
But until that’s all confirmed (the appointment, that is, we’ll have to wait a little while at least for the Moyes/Ferg stuff) he remains technically available and thus keeps his place here.
3) Zinedine Zidane
Is Zizou a great coach, or just a great Real Madrid coach? That isn’t to denigrate his achievements at the Bernabeu. Only Carlo Ancelotti has won the Champions League more often than the three occasions Zidane has lifted it. And the Frenchman stockpiled his winners’ medals in consecutive seasons. Add a couple of La Liga titles and Zidane’s record is unimpeachable.
Still, though, we’d love to see Zidane take another job. He seems to be very choosy – fair f***s, he’s certainly earned that right – having been linked with PSG, Manchester United and Chelsea in the past. He has spoken about his level of English being a barrier to managing in the Premier League, but we all want Zidane to take the chance to prove he’s brilliant beyond the Bernabeu.
That prospect, though, gets more remote the longer he turns his nose up at a return to the dug-out. He was offered £84million to boss Al-Hilal last summer but that wasn’t for Zizou. At this stage, he seems quite happy with his lot, and why the f*** wouldn’t he be? At least until the France job becomes available. If he turns that down this summer, like Sir Gareth Southgate, we’ll consider him retired from management.
QUIZ: Identify the Premier League managers from their player paths…
2) Xavi
After an unnecessarily shambolic exit from Barca, Xavi spoke of taking a sabbatical year. Which is now creeping towards two years, so can we expect the former midfield maestro back in the dug out?
It seems so. Xavi has been linked with Manchester United and Chelsea and he has spoken of taking a Premier League gig, though we doubt the job he’s looking for exists here: “There’s no hurry for me, but I’d like a good project. Like, ‘You have four years to work and make a project’. I’d love to work in the Premier League, I love the passion there. In Spain, it’s too much about the result.”
1) Pep Guardiola
What next for Pep? Does he even want to coach again?
Almost certainly not before a break, which the Catalan coach has earned after proving himself to be one of the greatest managers ever in the Premier League during a trophy-laden decade at Manchester City.
The best ever? He’s in the top two…
