THE PERFECT MANAGER
“What? I’m Actually Making a Manager…here's Sarah Flotel.
….Like Fergie, only better”. No he won’t look like Kelly LeBrock , that wouldn’t be conducive to procuring the finest performances from his players and I’m hoping my Macbook Pro will make less fuss of creating this Zeus of all managers than Wyatt’s 1985 Memotech MTX 512. I’m not planning on hacking into the Pentagon to generate more power for my creation; my 4gb of RAM will do quite nicely thanks. He could be the next England manager, no excuses then! I’d be tempted to recruit him for Ireland but they already have Trappatoni who has shed loads of kudos in the grand scheme of things.
Let me start with the superficial; he must look and dress like André Villas-Boas. Pep Guardiola comes a close second in that department but it would be foolish of me to use him in such a superfluous manner, that’s no insult to Villas-Boas in the tactical department, all will be revealed when Abramovich gets the black Amex card out in the next transfer window. We need heritage, boutique bytes of data for this Fergenstein creation.
I’ll take a pinch of the supreme versatility and chicanery of Helenio Herrera and mix that with a double shot of troubleshooting Lothar Matthaus favourite Ottmas Hitzfield. Arsene Wenger can design the menu and nurture the youth then pass them over to Pep Guardiola who will teach them a thing or two about complete dominance and fluidity. Onto the nitty gritty of total football and we’ll extract some DNA from Rinus Michels and splice it with a healthy dose of Johan Cruyff, natural selection is working at a rate of knots now.
The foundations of tactical and pastoral care are firmly laid now and the CPU is buzzing, “this is just a blueprint guys, how do you like it?”. “ Bigger tits”, “no, no, I mean more trophies, please”. Let’s bring back the gold with Marcello Lippi or should it be Vicente del Bosque? We could go double or quits with Mr Spain and there is potential on the table, but Lippi’s vintage will take the world cup-winning area of our super manager’s brain. Italian grace, fire and defensive omniscience are travel bag essentials for our journey to perfection.
“You're out of shape, I'll kick your arse”. Not plucked out of the Brian Clough book of quotes but the beautiful mouth of Garry and Wyatt’s dream woman Lisa. Philip Glenister took a huge swatch of Cloughie when he was doing his Stanislavski bit for the much-loved DCI Gene Hunt character priding himself on his team’s success above all, like Clough. He adds a few more European trophies to the cabinet. Whilst we are on the dogmatic, yet utterly inspirational practitioners of the game, Jose Mourinho cannot be neglected. A shot of his insane brilliance takes us another step closer to managerial ecstasy. Valeri Lobanovskyi will help balance the books with his eternal quest for precise tactical perfection and Bob Paisley can pick an impeccable squad and keep the game flowing like Willy Wonka’s chocolate waterfall.
We are going into CPU overdrive here, my Macbook is nearing meltdown but that’s the aim. There is no prize for guessing who brings the royal flush to our executive table; this commanding general now has 21,401 seats named after him and is the greatest club manager the world has ever seen, Sir Alex Ferguson of Old Trafford.
There is no kryptonite for this science fiction master of the dugout, he doesn’t even have a name. He really is as perfect as Lisa was in Weird Science, turning groups of good players into champions, a fire starter, forcing change and excellence, always getting what he wants, when he wants it. Feeling envious of the boundless funds in the bank of Manchester City? They have nothing on my man.
‘You guys created me, I didn't come from anywhere. Before you started messing around with your computer, I didn't even exist. By the way, you did an excellent job. Thank you’
Sarah is a London-based football writer, musician and songwriter. Co-founder of Hot Scores, Sarah also presents a weekly video podcast devoted to fans of the beautiful game. She can be found on Twitter @sarahhotscores.