Terry Venables has admitted that he isn’t certain how long it will take for an English manager to win the Champions’ League. Since the competitions’ reformation in 1992, only a handful of English coaches have even managed in the tournament, and the man who guided England to the semi-finals of Euro ’96 has conceded that this trend is likely to continue for some time.
Speaking at Stamford Bridge in his role as an ambassador for 188BET ahead of this weekend’s Champions’ League Final, Venables, a former Chelsea midfielder who played over 200 games for the Blues, explained that although English clubs are regularly well represented in Europe, he can’t see an English manager reaching the Final, net alone winning the trophy, for several years.
“But in saying that, where do we get them from? We have got Arsenal; not English, we have got Chelsea; not English, Man City are up there; not English. So there are no English managers in there anyway,” Venables said.
Harry Redknapp performed wonders in guiding Tottenham to the quarter-finals this season, having defeated the likes of Inter and AC Milan on the way, but the Spurs boss is only the sixth coach to represent England in the tournament, following Tony Mowbray, Steve McClaren, Ray Harford, Howard Wilkinson and Sir Bobby Robson, none of whom were able to steer their sides past the first knock-out stage.
Although English managers have failed to build successful reputations on a similar scale to Italians or Spaniards in the modern game, Venables believes the true test of a coach’s ability lies their capacity to handle pressure at the wrong end of the table.
“This thing about being a good manager is, you can’t judge it by being in the top four. There are haves and have nots. A lot of these managers that have done well like Mick McCarthy, Roberto Martinez and Ian Holloway, at the bottom of the League, and I’ve got to say, and I’ve been saying it for several weeks now, that Martinez, McCarthy and Holloway have done a fantastic job of getting their teams where they are. It’s the leader, you’ve got to back the jockey sometimes. The biggest player is the manager or the coach, he is the one that is the leader, he is the one that you have got to follow; can he handle it?
“They never looked like they couldn’t [handle pressure] on the television. When they came on they seemed very confident and I thought, and as I have said again and again, the fact that you’re looking for him to sort of worry a little bit. But that never came and they showed incredible leadership throughout the bottom [of the Premiership table]. There is nothing harder than that, that is where the problem is, that is where the pressure is, it’s at the bottom.”
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