Manchester United Will Finish second, Chelsea Will Finish first

Now Ronaldo has confirmed his future is at United, for the time being at least, people are having to backtrack on all their previous claims that United were screwed next season. I’ve already highlighted how ridiculous the argument is. However, now he’s staying the press have to rely on Ronaldo not being able to repeat his brilliance of last season.

To think that a team containing talent like that of Rooney, Tevez, Scholes, Carrick, Nani, Anderson etc. will struggle is terribly ignorant or terribly stupid. Eric Cantona, David Beckham, Roy Keane, Ryan Giggs, Paul Scholes and Ruud van Nistelrooy, to name a few, were not perfect and all endured bad, as well as good, periods of form. United didn’t fall to pieces because one player wasn’t performing out of his skin though!

Paolo Bandini writes up The Guardian’s report for Chelsea, predicting a first placed finish. Bandini reported on the events of Wimbledon for the same newspaper and maybe writing about tennis is where his true talent lies, if this example of his football journalism is much to go by.

1. Last season the Blues came within two points of the title and one shanked penalty of winning the Champions League with a manager whose methods were “25 years behind the times”. How, then, might they fare under the guidance of a World Cup winning manager?

I can only assume that ol Paolo hasn’t spent much time looking at the careers of World Cup winning managers.

When looking at this rare breed of manager, more often than not, if they go in to managing domestic clubs, they stick with what they know in their home nation.

Beckenbauer returned to Bayern Munich after leading West Germany to World Cup success, Vicente Feola returned to manage his home town of Sao Paulo after winning the World Cup with Brazil, just as Aymoré Moreira returned to Brazil.

There are a few South American managers who braved the shores of Europe though, taking on clubs across the continent. Carlos Bilardo won the World Cup with his homeland, Argentina, before joining Spanish side, Sevilla. Within the next year, Bilardo returned to Argentina to manage Boca Juniors.

After winning the World Cup with Argentina, César Luis Menotti spent some years in Europe, managing teams including Barcelona and Sampdoria. Carlos Alberto Parreira won the World Cup with Brazil, then went on to manage Valencia and Fenerbahce.

However, both had extremely limited success (ie. they didn’t get their teams relegated, but didn’t achieve anything of note), spending not much longer than a year or two at any of these European clubs.

Scolari has won the World Cup and that is an achievement most managers can only dream of, however, to think that correlates with success in Europe quite simply isn’t true. Of all the World Cup winning managers, not one of them has made a success of their managerial career in Europe, if not already residing from that part of the World.

The odds are stacked against him, rather than in favour of him, for making a success out of a managerial career in Europe.

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