CITY Vieira’s Ligue 1 challenge a Nice move for Blues
BARRING a massive U-turn, Patrick Vieira has said goodbye to the City family.
Having finished his playing career at the Etihad, the Frenchman spent a year working closely with football administration officer Brian Marwood before taking charge of the EDS and then becoming head coach at City sister club New York City.
Vieira’s stock is so high that Ferran Soriano and Khaldoon Al Mubarak have earmarked him as a future manager at the Etihad.
Does that change with the news, published and then hastily deleted on City’s official website on Sunday evening, that Vieira will be switching the Big Apple for the Cote D’Azur and a Ligue 1 challenge at the helm of OGC Nice? It shouldn’t.
Vieira’s ambition in taking on the Nice job is admirable when it would have been easy for him to stay in New York and wait for the perfect opportunity.
It says a lot about his reputation in Manchester that a number of City youngsters felt that training under Vieira in the EDS had prepared them for the demands of a Pep Guardiola session, easing the transition when they moved up to the first team.
Had he stayed in the City family, he would have been a significant name in any conversation about Guardiola’s successor.
Arsenal have already shown interest in the 41-year-old and more progression at Nice will only make more top clubs set eyes on the World Cup winner. But the manager has more to lose from taking the Nice job than City do. Any success he does have will only make him more appealing to club bosses, and something will have gone very wrong if the chance of managing City is not jumped at when the next opportunity comes around. And while Guardiola is in many ways a one-off, the nature of his appointment at the Etihad showed that the decision-makers in Manchester are willing to wait to get the right man. Should Vieira stumble, however, there is hardly a shortage of other candidates waiting to be given the chance. On top of established coaches, Mikel Arteta – who very nearly got the Arsenal job despite a lack of managerial experience – is both metaphorically and literally wellplaced at Guardiola’s right hand if the Blues want another continuity candidate. Seeing Vieira leave will not have been part of the grand plan, but there is no reason to think his move to Ligue 1 does more damage than good to it.