It’s unlikely to have escaped your attention that earlier this week Real Madrid appointed club legend and archetypal galactico Zinedine Zidane as their new manager.
Many are, predictably, already dizzy with excitement at the prospect of what Madrid’s football might look like under the mercurial Frenchman, and if Zizou’s managerial career is even three-eighths as successful as his playing days, good times beckon at the Bernabau.
Yet, while we certainly don’t want to go prematurely pissing on any Los Blancos bonfires, the truth is that many great players – particularly club legends or those gifted with natural flair and talent – turn out to be biblically horrific managers.
Here’s five tales of caution for Real Madrid.
Filippo Inzaghi
Pippo Inzaghi was the archetypal Italian poacher; the Paolo Rossi of his generation. In a career that played out at such storied clubs as Parma, Juventus and AC Milan, Inzaghi scored 197 goals in 466 appearances, with another 25 coming from 57 caps for Italy. His movement and goal-scoring instincts earned him the distinction of being Milan’s all-time leading scorer and Italy’s all-time top scorer in European competition.
Not unlike a certain bald Frenchman currently plying his trade in the Spanish capital, Inzaghi was appointed coach of Milan’s reserve team following the end of his playing days, before being appointed manager of the first team in the summer of 2014. Following a 2014-15 season that saw il Rossoneri finish 10th, their worst league finish in 17 years, Pippo was put out of his misery just 12 months after taking the top job.
Milan won barely a third of their games under Inzaghi’s guidance.
Diego Maradona
The former Boca Juniors, Barcelona, Napoli and Argentina No.10 needs no introduction as a player: he was, quite simply, the finest footballing talent of his generation, if not all time.
Diego Maradona the manager, however, is a wholly different topic. In the two years following his retirement as a player, Diego endured two separate managerial stints that produced just two wins from a combined 23 matches. And yet, 14 years later and despite having a coaching resume that even Ted Cruz would struggle to spin, Argentina decided that their on-field talisman was just the man to steer la Albiceleste to the 2010 World Cup.
And steer them to the 2010 World Cup he did, but only by the skin of his teeth. In a campaign that included a 6-1 defeat to Bolivia (the heaviest in their history) and a foul-mouthed press conference in which he told the assembled media to “suck it and keep on sucking it”, Argentina secured the fourth and final qualifying spot in the last fixture of the CONMEBOL tournament. This, remember, was a side blessed with Leo Messi, Sergio Aguero, Juan Riquelme and Gonzalo Higuain.
Argentina reached the quarter-finals in South Africa, losing 4-0 to Germany. Maradona was sacked shortly thereafter.
Gianfranco Zola
The darling of Stamford Bridge, Gianfranco Zola was one of the first truly great foreign players to consistently ply his trade in the Premier League. The diminutive Italian lit up the English top flight with his touch, movement and grace, scoring 80 goals in seven seasons at Chelsea, including the outrageous flick above.
But for all the cups and silverware Zola won as a player, his managerial career was an unmitigated disaster. He lasted two years at West Ham, winning barely a quarter of his games and finishing the 2009-10 season in 17th place. He fared even worse at Serie A side Cagliari, losing his first game in charge 5-0 and managing just two wins from 10 before he was sacked after three months.
John Barnes
Unquestionably a Liverpool (and Watford) legend, John Barnes won two league titles, two FA Cups and a League Cup during his time at Anfield. He also scored 209 goals for club and country during his near-20 year career, including this piece of sporting poetry against Brazil.
Only one word, however, can be used to sum up Barnes’ foray into management: horrific. Actually, that’s not true: insipid, woeful, depressing and shambolic all work equally well. Despite having zero coaching experience, Barnes was appointed Head Coach of Scottish giants Glasgow Celtic in 1999, and was sacked seven months later after a 3-1 cup loss to then amateur side Inverness Caledonian Thistle, with the club 10 points adrift of bitter rivals Glasgow Rangers in the league. While a win percentage of 65% appears highly respectable, one has to remember that Celtic have won the Scottish League fully 46 times, and Barnes spent more money on players than any of his more illustrious predecessors.
Thank God he has a music career to fall back on.
Alan Shearer
Alan Shearer is a Premier League winner and the Premier League’s all-time leading goal-scorer. More importantly, when he walks the streets of Newcastle, ordinary mortals kneel on bended knee at his footballing munificence. Revered in the North East of England as a Geordie Demi-God, he stayed for 10 seasons at Newcastle United when he undoubtedly had opportunities to win more silverware and earn considerably more money elsewhere.
Now, we’re perhaps being a little unfair here, but such was his success as a player, and so pompous are his present-day pronouncements from the comfort of the pundit’s sofa that we feel duty-bound to highlight how utterly disastrous Shearer’s albeit brief foray into management was. With Newcastle two points from safety in the EPL, and with eight games of the 2008-09 season remaining, Shearer was handed the task of leading the Magpies out of the mire. “Already there is a buzz around the club and the city”, Newcastle’s managing director Derek Llambias told the BBC. “The news has given everyone a massive boost”
He won but a single game, earning just five points from a possible 24. Newcastle were relegated from the top-flight of English football for the first time in 17 years.
Shearer hasn’t managed since.
