New ball please: Tennis ace fancies chances as a football manager.

FUTURE: Moving to another sport an option for the Scot

Andy Murray says he does “quite fancy myself” as a football manager, when he quits tennis.

An avid football fan – his grandfather Roy Erskine played professional football for Stirling Albion and Cowdenbeath – Murray even had trials for professional teams himself as a youngster.

FIFA.COM spoke to Murray to get his take on this year’s candidates for The Best FIFA Football Awards, his love of the game and how to become the best.

Hibs fan Murray was asked just how close he was to becoming a footballer?

“Not as close as everyone thinks! I was asked to go back after my first trial with Rangers but it was really difficult to play both tennis and football at the same time,” said Murray.

“Both sports were placing different demands on my body and in the end it just became a question of which sport I enjoyed the most and which I was better at. After a lot of deliberation, I decided tennis was the sport I was more naturally gifted at and decided to move to Spain to pursue a career in that, which thankfully turned out to be the right decision.”

Murray was also asked about his recent comment that he “would like to do something in football” when he retires from tennis. Did he have anything specific in mind?

“I have no idea! I just find the sport really interesting, I love reading, watching and talking about football, so if I wanted to do something that wasn’t tennis that I thought I was passionate enough about, I’d maybe look at doing something in football,” he said.

“I’m a huge fantasy football fan, so I’d probably quite fancy myself as a manager but it’s completely different doing it in real life, definitely not as easy as everyone thinks.

“Moving away from home at a young age was obviously difficult, but living in a city like Barcelona, which is famous for its football, made things easier. My friends and I would go a lot as teenagers, and we saw some great matches. One that stands out in my memory, is when we saw Barcelona against AC Milan in the Champions League in the 2004/2005 season. Ronaldinho scored one of the best goals I’ve ever seen live, people still talk about that goal.”

His winner for The Best FIFA Men’s Player award “has to be Cristiano Ronaldo at number one. He won La Liga and the Champions League, and scored a crazy amount of goals in both competitions to help his team get there. I think he scored 10 goals from the quarter-finals onwards in the Champions League, which is unbelievable.”

For the best coach “it’s difficult to look past Zinedine Zidane at Real Madrid: league winners, Champions League winners and also the first club to win the latter back-to-back. That kind of performance doesn’t happen by accident and takes a special kind of manager to be able to motivate your players week in, week out to sustain that level of performance.”

Andy Murray has his tongue firmly in his cheek when suggesting his next job may be as a football manager.

However, given the scale of the tennis ace’s lofty achievements in his chosen field, one wouldn’t dare to completely rule it out.

Whatever he does once he hangs up his racquet, there is no doubt Murray’s determination and commitment will remain an inspiration for thousands.

Picture: Getty. Andy Murray had a trial for Rangers as a youngster.