INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTARS<\/p>\n
While Thomas Tuchel continues to gaslight his employer<\/a>s at the FA into believing he was in no way responsible for England\u2019s comically shambolic semi-final exit at the hands of Argentina, not every head coach who underperformed at the Geopolitics World Cup is still in their job. A total of 17 different managers who took teams to North America have since left their roles, with safety-first\u2019s Steve Clarke, failing-up\u2019s Roberto Mart\u00ednez and tyranny\u2019s Marcelo Bielsa among them. In Europe, teams such as Portugal (Jorge Jesus), Croatia (Slaven Bilic), Scotland (S\u00e9bastien Pocognoli), Czechia (Santi Denia) and Belgium (Mark van Bommel) will go into the Nations League under new management, but it is towards the bigger dogs of the football pack where Football Daily wishes to turn today\u2019s beady gaze.<\/p>\n Germany: Having been accused of using his role as a TV pundit to undermine Julian Nagelsmann during the GWC, it was no great shock to see J\u00fcrgen Klopp take over from the 39-year-old when he stepped down. Klopp immediately fired a volley<\/a> across the bows of the German press pack and will begin his first role in international management with a trip to the Netherlands. Unlike his predecessor, the former Liverpool boss is unlikely to rock up to training on a skateboard and it will be intriguing to see how successfully he instils his ethos of heavy-metal football in a group of players he only gets into the rehearsal room three or four times a season. \u201cThis is the pinnacle, the absolute high point of my footballing career as coach,\u201d he parped, raising sceptical eyebrows on Merseyside. \u201cI will give everything I have got.\u201d<\/p>\n Netherlands: Upon replacing Ronald Koeman, Xavi Hern\u00e1ndez was eager to emphasise his deep connection with the Dutch. While it remains to be seen if the former Spanish midfield maestro is a bike-riding windmill enthusiast with a capacity for extreme bluntness, he was handed his Barcelona debut by Louis van Gaal and name-dropped club legends Johan Cruyff and Rinus Michels during his unveiling. Third choice on a shortlist of four<\/a> behind Pep Guardiola and Arne Slot, Xavi can at least sleep safe in the knowledge the Dutch FA considered him a slightly more glamorous candidate than Michael Reiziger, and will begin his international reign with a match against a fellow newbie. \u201cI feel motivated because we are playing against Germany,\u201d he cheered, before his opening game in Amsterdam. \u201cSo yeah, it\u2019s a big challenge from the beginning, but I think we will be ready.\u201d<\/p>\n Italy: Having suffered the indignity of failing to qualify for their third successive World Cup, Italian football suits didn\u2019t so much go back to the drawing board, as back in time when it came to replacing Gennaro Gattuso. Roberto Mancini is back<\/a> for his second spell in charge, having previously masterminded victory in the European Championship in 2021 and subsequent failure to get to the HRWC in 2022. \u201cI believed that the best person to become head coach was \u200cRoberto Mancini,\u201d tooted FIGC top brass Giovanni Malag\u00f2, shortly after his organisation\u2019s plot to install Andrea Pirlo in the role was foiled<\/a> by the former midfielder\u2019s commercial ties to a Russian betting firm. A famously patient people when it comes to their national football team, fans of the Azzurri are surely unlikely to get upset if early results against Belgium and Turkey don\u2019t go their team\u2019s way \u2026<\/p>\n France: It was a matter of when, not if Zinedine Zidane took over the national team<\/a> and despite his pedigree as a three-time Bigger Cup-winning coach of Real Madrid, he has extremely big boots to fill. After taking over from his former French water carrier, Didier Deschamps, Zizou played all the right notes. \u201cI\u2019ve been looking forward to this moment,\u201d he cheered. \u201cIt\u2019s a dream come true. The France national team has been the most beautiful thing that has ever happened to me. It\u2019s a great adventure that I hope is just beginning.\u201d Kylian Mbapp\u00e9 has already described the prospect of working under Zizou as being \u201clike a film\u201d. Its box-office success will almost certainly stand or fall on the chemistry \u2013 or lack of it \u2013 between two of French football\u2019s most iconic leading men.<\/p>\n LIVE ON BIG WEBSITE\u200a<\/p>\n Join Will Unwin at 5.45pm (BST) for Women\u2019s Bigger Cup updates on Bayern Munich 2-2 Manchester City.<\/p>\n QUOTE OF THE DAY<\/p>\n \u201cEvery time I see it, I\u2019m cringing, I\u2019m in disbelief. It\u2019s horrible to watch back and to see what could have been. Thankfully I was fortunate I did manage to fall on to the floor at the right time, so nothing snapped as the roller went over me \u2026 I was able to get my left arm up and relieve some of the pressure, and then I was able to get my teammates around me who were able to lift it, and I was able to squeeze out but at that moment where it was crushing my left leg, it was quite terrifying, I must say\u201d \u2013 Andros Townsend explains what it was like to be run over by that<\/a> pitch roller in Thailand and just how much he thanks his lucky stars for not coming to more harm than suffering a few cuts and bruises.\u200a<\/p>\n RECOMMENDED LOOKING<\/p>\n It\u2019s our man David Squires on \u2026 Big Sir Jim lamenting the decline<\/a> of once-mighty empires.<\/p>\n Zing! Illustration: David Squires\/The Guardian<\/p>\n double quotation markPrize o\u2019 the day to Barry Glendenning, surely, for mentioning Johnny Crumplin (football genius) in Monday\u2019s Football Daily<\/a>. As an Ipswich fan marooned in Sussex, I spent much of my teenage years at the Goldstone which, despite being a dump (I stood on the crumbling South Stand), held a certain magic for me. It still does, actually. Haven\u2019t been to the Amex yet \u2013 hopeless nostalgia is undoubtedly a factor. The team weren\u2019t much better than the ground for most of that time, but the 1987-88 promotion season was memorable. Garry Nelson was a bit special, Doug Rougvie had played under Fergie at Aberdeen and Gerry Armstrong had legendary status after *that* goal, but the rest of the team probably (and unfairly ) fall into the journeyman category. I loved them all. Keith Dublin dribbling his way into and then out of trouble, sleeves-up Kevin Bremner who grafted and worked the Albion into the promotion places, Deano (one of the Wilkins brothers) classy and, of course, Barry Lloyd, who never brought a sub on until the last four or five minutes, frustrating us beyond belief. And into this pantheon came teenage Johnny C who, to start with, was utterly hapless, hence the nickname football genius. Somehow, despite this, we took to him from the off and it was lovely to see how he grew into becoming an Albion legend in what were fallow years. Blimey, not sure where that all came from \u2013 you can probably tell I\u2019m stuck out in the middle of the Fens on a slow-moving train. But thank you for bringing it all back to me!\u201d \u2013 Jonathan Foulkes.<\/p>\n double quotation markI know the powers that be have listened to Football Daily\u2019s \u2018Stop Football\u2019 pleas and given us very little to do for the next three weeks but, as we are just five games in to the Premier League season, can everyone stop going on about the race for the Golden Boot<\/a> and which team are going to bloody champions\u201d \u2013 Nigel Sanders.<\/p>\n double quotation markJudging by the photo of him sitting behind their \u2018Life\u2019s Good\u2019 logo in yesterday\u2019s Quote of the Day<\/a>, LG could do a lot worse than appoint Jos\u00e9 Mourinho as a brand ambassador for their campaign. As football watchers have long known, he exudes the spirit of that exclamation from every single pore\u201d \u2013 Andrew Parker.<\/p>\n double quotation markSo, Jonathan Wilson has a new book, about football in Eastern Europe, Behind the Curtain<\/a>, while his take on Zidane as the new France manager will reveal the \u2018wizard behind the curtain<\/a>\u2019. Brilliant effort from the subeditor and marketing team working in harmony\u201d \u2013 Paul Vickers.<\/p>\n If you have any, please send letters to the.boss@theguardian.com<\/a>. Today\u2019s letter o\u2019 the day prize goes to \u2026 Jonathan Foulkes, who wins a copy of Behind the Curtain<\/a> by Big Website\u2019s Jonathan Wilson. It\u2019s out now and available in The Guardian Bookshop<\/a> alongside loads of other great football titles. Terms and conditions for our competitions, when we run them, are here<\/a>.\u200a<\/p>\n Behind the Curtain you say? Illustration: The Guardian BookshopRECOMMENDED LISTENING<\/p>\n Women\u2019s Football Weekly has landed<\/a>. And Football Weekly is here, too, in audio <\/a>and video<\/a> form.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"INTERNATIONAL SUPERSTARS While Thomas Tuchel continues to gaslight his employers at the FA into believing he was in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":779151,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[33],"tags":[218,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-779150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-football","tag-football","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=779150"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/779150\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/779151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=779150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=779150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=779150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}