Time to stand up to gaffers who erupt like geysers
Managers should be sent back to the dugout to stamp out their pitchside shenanigans, says James Corrigan
What chance brats in the schoolyard behaving if managers row over where they stand
Rafael Benitez was reunited with his Newcastle players yesterday after his recovery from a hernia operation and there can be no doubt his return to the training ground was gleefully welcomed.
But did they honestly miss Benitez, and his ever frenetic urgings, at the Liberty Stadium on Sunday, where Newcastle got three points anyway?
Listening to his assistant, Francisco de Miguel Moreno, Benitez’s presence in the Wirral and not Wales was no disadvantage whatsoever.
Granted, the Spaniard, with all those hand movements that translate to his impenetrable tactic sheet, might have laid waste to a few costly vases in his living room.
Yet strictly in terms of football, there was apparently no price to pay. Benitez stayed in constant contact with Antonio Gomez Perez and from the directors’ box he relayed the instructions to fellow first-team coach Mikel Antia in the technical area. “It all worked perfectly,” Moreno said. “No fuss at all.”
It should work that way every weekend. Fifa, Uefa, the FA, the Premier League, whoever, should ban the managers from pitchside on match day because they are doing more harm than good.
Saturday’s spat between serial offender Mark Hughes and the serially offensive Jose Mourinho was merely the latest confirmation of the unseemly and entirely unnecessary sideshow distracting from the genuine entertainment.
Hughes pushed Mourinho and told him to “f--- off ” when he dared step into his technical area. Mourinho took great umbrage and refused to shake Hughes’s hand at the final whistle. Hughes was bemused, Mourinho was incensed. The affair would have been almost interesting and certainly funny if we had not seen it all before.
Two weeks ago, Danny Cowley and Steve Evans had an altercation at Field Mill during Mansfield Town versus Lincoln City. As ever, the conflict started when a territory was threatened. “Steve Evans came towards our technical area aggressively,” Cowley said. “At that point, you have two options – you either stand your ground or you step back.”
Evans was not in a tank and there was the third option of being an adult and ignoring him and allowing the officials to do their job. And guess what? Evans refused to shake Cowley’s hand. But to be fair, Mansfield’s Checka trade Trophy dreams were in tatters for yet another season.
Because that is always the excuse presented when the gaffers erupt like geysers. They are under so much pressure it is inevitable tensions boil over.
Alan Pardew, no stranger to a tracksuited flare-up, explained in his newspaper column how the enmity builds and take note you North and South Koreans, because this is serious stuff.
“You might make a plea to the fourth official – ‘Come on!’” Pardew wrote. “The other manager says, ‘What are you moaning about?’ – then it starts.”
These national incidents would be averted if the paint stripper was applied to those ridiculous oblongs and the game reverted to managers being obliged to stay in their dugouts.
Alas, it never will happen because, in 1993, Fifa decided to recognise the manager as “an element of the game” and so the culture of the Guv’nor’s celebrity went into overdrive.
What chance spoilt brats in the schoolyard ever acting properly if their guardians at the gate are squabbling over who is standing where? Sit down and behave yourselves. Preferably on a sofa, hundreds of miles away.