THE MADDEST MANAGERS EVER!
TAXI FOR BILARDO x11
Footballers are notoriously superstitious – a ludicrous number have sock-donning and tunnel-emerging protocol – but Carlos Bilardo, 1986 World Cup-winning manager with Argentina, was the daddy of delusional ritualists. On one occasion, the team bus broke down and his squad were forced to continue to the match by taxi. They won, and El Narigon – that’s ‘big nose’, as he was impolitely dubbed in Buenos Aires – insisted that his side then cabbed it to their future fixtures.
At Estudiantes, a Brazilian lady wished him boa sorte before a game, and after a positive result he asked if he could phone her for further good luck prior to every match. However, Bilardo denied the rumour that he had once banned players from eating chicken, supposedly a cursed animal. “Poor chickens,” he pondered. “What do they have to do with anything?” Well, quite.
LOUSY WAY TO CELEBRATE
We all get carried away following a win – FFT has the five-a-side tats to prove it – but Miguel Herrera almost had to be carried away in 2015. Mexico’s boss was threatening to make El Tri a force when he threatened a little too much force.
Herrera’s side were a hit at the 2014 World Cup, as was Herrera himself: the pint-sized gaffer’s touchline tantrums, photobombing and bearhugs made him a social media darling. When El Tri lifted the Gold Cup a year later, Herrera was in high spirits. Too high. At Philadelphia airport to fly home with the trophy, the ex-defender allegedly punched Christian Martinoli in the neck (Herrera is 5ft 5in) as the reporter went through security. Herrera, who’d had beef with Martinoli, was sacked. Perhaps his nickname, ‘The Louse’, isn’t meant affectionately at all.
GOULD vs HARTSON: THIS TIME IT’S..WEIRD
Where to start, when describing Bobby Gould’s four years managing Wales?
In a truly epic lowlights reel, Gould made the squad train in a prison; wore a mask to a press conference; designed a kit; had a row with the Manic Street Preachers; made Vinnie Jones captain following a secret player ballot in which nobody voted for him; told a BBC exec to change a negative Ceefax match report in the middle of the night; selected one player from the Welsh leagues and one whose career then comprised a single
