#AgainstModernFootball - obsession with managers

The Manchester derby was played last weekend, but it wasn’t just billed as a clash between City and United. Of course the meeting of the Premier League’s two title favourites mattered, with profound conclusions draw even after only four games of the new season, but it didn’t matter as much as the encounter that occurred on the touchline. It wasn’t so much City v United but Pep Guardiola v Jose Mourinho.

Sky Sports might as well have kept a dedicated trained on the two men, much like they used to be with the fabled Player Cam all those years ago. It’s little wonder they didn’t get a body language expert to sit alongside Martin Tyler and Gary Neville in the commentary box, chipping in with analysis of both Guardiola and Mourinho, drawing on what their fist pumps and watch-tapping could really mean.

The scoreboard at full-time might as well have read Mourinho 1-2 Guardiola, such was the focus on the two men. But this is the way of the modern game. This is football’s obsession with those on the touchline rather than those on the pitch. It used to be said that no one player is bigger than the club. That might still be true, but it cannot be said of managers. They are quite frequently bigger than the clubs they manage.

How long before clubs start to take on the names of those who coach them? Perhaps by next season Manchester United will be Mourinho United and Manchester City known as Guardiola City. Maybe their faces will be embroidered into the crests. The Red Devil will be replaced by the pouting expression of Mourinho. The City ship will make way for Guardiola’s shiny head. After all, they’ve given the former Barcelona boss everything else he could hope for since arriving at the Etihad Stadium this summer.

There’s something inherently bizarre about the modern fetishisation of the football manager over the football player. We are all guilty of it, but why do we long to hear from the man picking the team rather than the ones actually playing it? Something has snapped in the psyche of the present day football fan. Will kids aspire to be managers rather than wingers or strikers in the playground? Could a coach claim the front cover of FIFA over the likes of Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo?

Fans around the world still but the shirts of their favourite teams, but will it come to pass that one day supporters imitate the managers of their favourite teams? Arsenal fans could snap up discount trench-coats from Sports Direct bargain bins, fidgeting with their zips just like Arsene Wenger. Old Trafford could soon become a sea of fashionable Armani coats, complete with slicked silver fox hair dos. Chelsea supporters might soon have hair transplants.

It could be that this is the lasting legacy of the fascination with computer games like Football Manager and Championship Manager before it (let’s draw the line at LMA Manager, though). We all fancy ourselves as managers, perpetually insisting that we know better than the guy actually in charge of picking the team.

There’s an anecdote told by comedian Jason Manford that sums up the modern obsession with Football Manager. “I went and did a gig at Manchester City and met a load of the players,” says the Man City fan. “I met Micah Richards, the defender, and I was a bit rude to him. Afterwards my dad, who was with me, said ‘you were a bit rude to Micah Richards’. I said 'yeah, I don’t know why’. It was only when I got home I realised on Football Manager he’d turned up late for training a couple of times.”

And so football’s obsession with those in the dugout looks set to continue for the foreseeable future. If anything our fixation with managers and the guys who pick the teams might heighten even further. We may not have reached saturation point yet.

So expect to hear and read a lot more about personal duels and individual rivalries in the context of football as a team sport. Get used to incessant chat about the body language of those on the touchline and grow accustomed to derbies being about two men rather than two clubs. Football’s manager obsession must be satisfied.