Ben Lyttleton explains why Marco van Basten, back in football after years away, has the pedigree to become the next great Dutch coach
Marco van Basten will end his ten-year exile from football later this year when he completes his coaching qualifications and all the signs are that he will be a more successful boss than his former Milan team-mates Ruud Gullit and Frank Rijkaard.
His name is enough to secure him a coaching licence, but Diego Maradona’s forays into management have convinced few of his credentials, reports Ben Backwell
Following Argentina’s disastrous 2002 World Cup campaign, Diego Maradona declared from his Cuban retreat that he was willing to take over coaching the Argentine national team “for free”. “I have always said, and I repeat, that I am willing to manage the team without charging a single peso,” said Maradona, adding that he would put the team “in order”. According to polls carried out by local websites among Argentines then howling for the head of coach Rafael Bielsa, there were few takers, and the offer was discreetly ignored by the country’s football association (AFA).
Barney Ronay examines why average players often make good bosses while star names struggle
It is a footballing axiom that great players rarely make great managers. No swag-bag of playing honours, no bulging armoury of international caps can prepare a middle-aged footballing man for the vertiginous leap into management. In fact, the most successful managers in English football currently – Sir Alex Ferguson, Arsène Wenger and Gérard Houllier – all eked out relatively mediocre playing careers.
Chris Taylor sifts through the fantasy and the reality to explain the compulsive appeal of the Championship Manager computer game
When all but two of an Economics A-level class fail the subject there are going to be inquiries. We all had the same teachers, the same opportunities to learn, the same text books, but not all of us had Championship Manager. So, in turn, not all of us spent the night before our exam trying to take Bury to Premier League glory. And while I ended up only with the UEFA Cup and an E grade in microeconomics, I feel satisfied that the right choice was made.
Portsmouth’s erratic Japanese keeper can’t get near the first team but, reports Justin McCurry, he’s happy plying his trade on English training grounds
Just before last year’s World Cup, a football writer in Japan drew attention to a phobia Yoshikatsu Kawaguchi shares with Transylvania’s most feared resident. Aside from being a poor joke, it turned out to be a prescient commentary on the fortunes of Japan’s erstwhile No 1. Less than two years after his £1.7 million move to Portsmouth, Kawaguchi’s fear of crosses has come to symbolise a promising career that is in danger of slipping from his grasp.