THERE IS SOMETHING ridiculously entertaining about supporting a team with a cool manager. If your coach has charisma, wears fine suits and has a general feeling of slickness on the sidelines, it gives you more joy than if he is wearing a weather-beaten baseball cap.
Mauricio Pochettino has won his first two Premier League games, and already you can tell that expectations are even higher among Spurs fans simply because of how the Argentine carries himself. Pochetttino’s good start got us thinking about the coolest managers to ever grace the Premier League. Here is our definitive ten.
(Success doesn’t automatically equal cool. Ferguson and Wenger are two of the Premier League’s best managers ever, but didn’t make it under the following criteria: hair, style, charisma and smirking ability.)
10. Paolo Di Canio
While his scorched-earth tenure as a Premier League manager was short and dreadful, it would be hard to argue that Di Canio wasn’t cool. He just had a really, really hard time keeping his.
You have to be a certain individual to pull off a great knee-slide, and Di Canio did it with aplomb during Sunderland’s 3-0 win over Newcastle.
He loses cool points for behaving like a dictator (I’m proud for getting through that sentence without making a single reference to the obvious link), and for eviscerating Phil Bardsley for passing out in a casino covered in £50 notes, when a really cool manager would have asked for a cut of the profits and left it at that.
9. Gerry Francis
One word sums up Francis’ inclusion on the list: hair. I’m convinced that Francis was never a particularly good manager but Spurs executives just saw his hair and presumed he was successful, like when Homer grows a mane of thick, lustrous hair in The Simpsons.
Gerry Francis and David Dickinson our living proof that people will overlook a lack of obvious talent if your hair is immaculately coiffed.
8. Ruud Gullit
Any Dutchman who comes up with a phrase like “sexy football” (to be pronounced shexay fuutbowl) deserves a place on this list. As well as coining that sensual footballing term, Gullit was a Premier League manager who had dreadlocks. My photoshop skills aren’t great so why don’t we do this the old fashioned way: imagine Tony Pulis, Arsene Wenger and Sean Dyche with the same hair.
Now try to tell me that Gullit didn’t have an extra dash of panache.
7. Gianluca Vialli
When talking about Gianluca Vialli, you should always remember his proper title of “housewives favourite, Gianluca Vialli”. Somebody, somewhere, made the decision that Vialli was a stud and everyone has just rolled with it over the years. In fairness to the former Chelsea boss, he wears nice suits and his pocket square is always particularly pointy.
6. Graeme Souness
Souness earns his place on this list because he has two distinct styles: the player/Liverpool manager era when he wore a porn ‘stache with pride and the latter day Souness who is immaculately tanned and by his own admission, does so well with the ladies that he goes by “00-Souness”. Ok, that last part may be from Apres Match, but it sounds like something that could be true (go to one minute in to hear “Souness” describe his sex life).
5. AVB
Whether you want to call him Mini-Mourinho, The Special Two or just AVB, Villas-Boas’ coolness commands respect. He has the understated speech pattern, the stubble, and the style to be every bit as slick as his mentor, Jose. But success is important when measuring coolness, and AVB has been more style than substance during his managerial career so far.
But when measuring how cool a customer AVB is, you have to look at this video of him as a youngster. The nervous giggling and the shifty eyes would lead you to believe that AVB consciously modelled himself on his mentor over the following years. The Special Two it is.
4. Carlo Ancelotti
The man who has an arched eyebrow that Dwayne Johnson would proud of. Ancelotti could deliver a tactical team-talk before a Champions League final through a series of eyebrow arches.
Ancelotti’s laid-back manner works well at clubs like Real Madrid, Chelsea and PSG, where you have to deal with meddling egomaniacs for owners. This next photo sums Ancelotti up well; so mysterious, so casual.
3. Roberto Mancini
The Manchester City scarf-wearing, lovely coat-owning silver fox was pretty successful as a Premier League manager but he did an even greater service to fans of English football by showing them how to marry a love of the game with a classy fashion sense.
What makes Mancini an even greater man was his reaction to this show of disrespect from Mario Balotelli. As the commentator says in the video, “that is the kind of man I want to play for”.
2. Brian Clough
Granted, during Clough’s one year in the Premier League he was a shadow of the captivating and arrogant legend who conquered Europe with Nottingham Forest, so this is more of a lifetime achievement award. Clough was Jose Mourinho long before the Portuguese manager started making headlines. Just look at Clough during this joint interview with rival and former Leeds manager Don Revie. It was filmed just after Clough had been sacked as Revie’s successor at Leeds.
I feel privildged to have witnessed the moment, at about the one minute mark, when Clough cuts short Revie as he talks about Leeds’ successes with “You topped the disciplinary chart”. It is such a bizarre interview. It would have been like if our next manager sat down beside Arsene Wenger back in 2006.
Unfortunately, a lot of Clough’s brash style has been forgotten and replaced with memories of how he was in later years, but for fans of a certain age, Brian Clough will always be a special kind of character.
1. Jose Mourinho
It had to be him. His style might make him hated by half of football fans, but it has also gotten him a trophy cabinet that you can’t really argue with. The Special One might not be as slick as he once was (Real Madrid broke him; sometimes he didn’t even wear suits!), but he still has a presence that most of us wish we had too.
The man was such a style icon that the phrase “a Jose coat” entered the lexicon and Mario Rosenstock based an entire song on it (not to mention making an entire television show about a puppet Jose).
He was a Clough of the modern era; a manager who felt comfortable humiliating his rivals because he knew his team could back him up. A lot of people hate the guy but there is no question that we all have to be at least 20% cooler just from having watched him.
Have we left anyone out? Who do you think is the coolest Premier League manager ever?
