So, another fantasy candidate – Villa Boas – has dropped out of the running today.
As I said in the previous piece, these are all names who were on the fan’s wish-list; there is no proof that the club itself was remotely interested in any of them. Benitez hasn’t knocked back the idea yet, but few really expect Celtic to move for him anyway.
This eliminates all the fantasy candidates but one, and Mourinho is so far outside of reality that I dismiss it without even having to do a piece on it. He might not be able to command a job offer from a title challenger in the big five leagues anymore (actually, big three of Italy, Spain and England) but there is enough cash sloshing around the game that somebody, somewhere, will throw a fortune at him and get him to sign a contract.
Martinez would have been my number one pick, even accounting for some of the other names.
Whilst the statement from his agent doesn’t rule it as some have erroneously reported, there is little doubt that he will plenty of offers when he does want to try his hand again at club football. The guy number two on my list would have been Rose; he’s been snapped up by the Bundesliga.
It is hardly a surprise.
Those two were realistic targets, but who else is?
In my piece earlier, I talked up Michel Preud’homme; he is on the B list, but the B list still has impressive names on it, if our club is ambitious enough to try for them.
There are four who interest me, and one of them will be a bit of a bolt from the blue.
First is Eddie Howe of Bournemouth; that will take some doing though, to prise him away from an EPL club.But it would be somewhat poetic if we lost a manager to that league and replaced him with one from the same division. Why Howe? Because he has proved he can “manage up”; he took that club through the divisions to a place in the EPL and he’s kept them there.
It’s not for nothing that the League Managers Association named him the Manager of the Decade in its first ever time giving out that award.
Second is a man some of you will never have heard of, perhaps not even as a player; Abel Ferreira, of Braga, who has proved that attacking football will pay dividends no matter which club you’re at; he has his unfancied team fourth in the Portuguese league for the second year running, playing blindingly good stuff that has stunned observers.
In a league dominated by the giants at Sporting, Benfica and Porto, he has made his unfancied team the absolute “best of the rest.” One of those sides will grab him up eventually, and when he gets the certain move to England everyone will know his name.
Third is the guy who made my shortlist before Brendan came along, and who still languishes in a football environment where his full talents are not appreciated; Marcello Gallardo at River Plate, who’s list of successes is even more astounding than when I last profiled him back in 2016.
Since then he has added the Argentine Cup, the Argentine Super Cup and a second Copa Libertadores to his tally of trophies; this guy has been linked to several major moves to Europe but none has ever come off. Would we take such a punt? It would be a no-risk bet.
Lastly, I would hope that parochialism wouldn’t stop us from going for someone like Giovanni Van Bronckhorst.
A manager who is on several Ibrox fan-site wish-lists, he too would be a no-brainer appointment, the kind who’d be a game-changer here. At Feynoord, he’s already got one Dutch title, two Dutch cups and two Cruyff Shields.
This has been a disappointing season for the team and for him, but he remains a top class tactician and technical coach.
Again though, these are just names on a fan site. There’s no evidence that our club has any interest in them, but that I was able to pull another four out of the sky on a day when other potential candidates have cried off shows the depth of management talent that there is out there.
This list hasn’t even included some of the media favourites, like Jack Ross.
I could have gone on too, because a few other managers tickle my fancy; Janne Andersson at the Swedish national team is a top class manager who proved it when he took IFK Norrköping to their first title in 27 years and then there’s Philip Cocu (pictured) who has been out of work since a disastrous spell in Turkey last year … but prior to that was at PSV where he won three titles, a Dutch Cup and two Cruyff Shields.
I could produce names like these all day long.
The talent pool for good managers is both wide and deep.
A club with ambition would not go far wrong with any of these guys.
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