ZE PLAYFUL ONE
Ze Roberto. Ze Elias. Anyone know any other famous Zes, once well respected for their work across Europe and beyond but now long since put out to pasture? It’s a question The Fiver has long wrestled with but there’s now a new sheriff in town. Welcome Ze. José. JoZé Mourinho. He wants to get back into football management and he’s ready to have at it like a kid in a sweetshop.
“‘Ze’ is full of fire,” cheered, er, Mourinho, who has adopted his childhood nickname in order to rediscover some of the old magic. It’s not quite Robin van Persie’s “little boy inside me” but it does suggest even the Lowry’s grumpiest ex-resident has a playful little goblin just waiting to spring out. Sorry: we mean playful little Wichtelmännchen. Our guy Ze has started learning German in the hope of satisfying his wanderlust – or fernweh as he’d call it – and perhaps landing a plum Bundesliga role. The phone hasn’t rung yet though, certainly not from anyone connected to Bayern Munich or Borussia Dortmund, so he’s waiting it out and hoping a big hitter from one of the top five leagues fancies a bit of playful fun.
If there was a Tinder for football managers then Ze would be working his way through the bios, having tried “Special One” and then, with unseemly haste, realising “Happy One” didn’t quite bring in the matches he wanted. Keeping things simple and reminding everyone that, at heart, he’s just a big wide-eyed kid smacks slightly of a mid-life crisis and might put off the club-next-door types, but there’s every chance someone – maybe a glamour kid from the Paris area? – might eventually be impressed by a flashy name.
“I have to be patient and wait for the right one and the right one is at the dimension of what I am as a manager,” he purred, clearing that all up for us. What Ze really needs is a wormhole into a dimension where he is still relevant; a time before PES 2020 cover star Scott McTominay and the RT rouble became his closest friends. “I have to be patient and this is the most difficult thing,” he continued, closely mirroring how the Old Trafford faithful felt about the wait for a dynamic performance or two throughout most of his tenure. At 56, Mourinho will surely work again. All he needs, while everyone else goes back to school and little Ze stays up in his room, is a demonstration of freundschaftsbeziehungen from a suitor or two.
QUOTE OF THE DAY
“Even if you can say good morning and good afternoon, 1-0, 2-0, that was a corner, should have had a free-kick, little things like that will endear you to the people … it’s not gone down well at all here in Spain and it saddens me” – John Toshack reveals how Gareth Bale could have been adored in Madrid if only he knew how to scream for a set-piece in the native tongue.
RECOMMENDED LOOKING
It’s David Squires on … JRM’s World of Footer. You can buy it here too.
FIVER LETTERS
“Re: getting off at Diss (yesterday’s Still Want More?). Here in Sydney, we have the saying ‘Getting off at Redfern’; in Portsmouth I’m told it’s ‘Getting off at Fratton’. No doubt every rail network has its own version of what can only be a very unsatisfactory outcome” – Trevor Townson.
“While I’d like to sympathise with Fiver readers still waiting for letters prizes (Fiver letters passim), I have the reverse problem. Back in about 2016, I asked to not win a copy of Football Manager, and promptly won letter of the day. I gave it to my nephew, and he hasn’t talked to me since” – Andrew Tate.
“Slightly away from entertaining criticisms of films and into music (Fiver letters passim), there used to be a series of Channel 4 idents where stars of their shows offered answers to standard interview questions, one of which was about the first record bought by the likes of Jimmy Carr and the cast of Ugly Betty. When it was David Mitchell’s turn, he said that the only record he had ever bought for himself was … But Seriously by Phil Collins, adding ‘if there’s a better reason never to buy another album them I’d like to hear it’” – Ed Taylor, who won a copy of Football’s Flaws and Foibles by Richard Foster on 2 December 2017 and was never contacted about receiving his prize.
Send your letters to the.boss@theguardian.com. And you can always tweet The Fiver via @guardian_sport. Today’s winner of our prizeless letter o’the day is … Ed Taylor.
NEWS, BITS AND BOBS
Chelsea have banned for life an absolute piece of work they concluded had racially abused Raheem Sterling at Stamford Bridge last season and excluded five other fans for between one and two years over incidents at the same match.
Police in Brazil investigating rape allegations against Neymar have closed the case due to a lack of evidence.
Bury’s opening League One game, at home to Milton Keynes, has been suspended because of the Shakers’ ongoing financial-knack.
Everton have somehow agreed a deal to sign Moise Kean from Juve for £29m. Speaking of which, PSG have given the Toffees £1m for every year of Idrissa Gueye’s life. Yes, he’s 29.
The USA! USA!! USA!!! women’s team have poured cold water over claims from US Soccer that they are paid more than USA! USA!! USA!!! men. “It is a ruse,” sighed a spokeswoman. “For every game a man plays on the MNT he makes a higher base salary payment than a woman on the WNT.”
Former Italy boss Roberto Donadoni is the new man in the hot seat at relegation-threatened Shenzhen FC after Juan Ramón López Caro was bundled through the door marked 做一个.
And Noah Solskjær, 19, has been named in the Kristiansund squad to face his dad’s team in a pre-season kickabout. “I have a small role model in Michael Carrick,” tooted Noah, in an unnecessary dig at Manchester United’s assistant boss. “It would be nice to get in the game. After seeing such big games, I’ve got used to it.”
STILL WANT MORE?
“He calculates every step”: how Edu can bring the good times back to Arsenal. By Thiago Rabelo.
There’s no stopping our Premier League previews. Here are No 3: Bournemouth and No 4: Brighton.
League One season preview ahoy! Courtesy of Ben Fisher.
Is Shkodran Mustafi off to Monaco for £27m? Find out in the Mill.
Oh, and if it’s your thing … you can follow Big Website on Big Social FaceSpace. And INSTACHAT, TOO!
