If Manchester United were to sack Jose Mourinho today, who would be his ideal replacement?
Jose Mourinho has come under a lot of scrutiny for his rather dull ad seemingly negative tactics at Manchester United. This may be in part due to the frustration he has with the Manchester United board, particularly the CEO of the Club, Ed Woodward[1].
This is primarily because of the lack of financial support to purchase a recognized centre-back during the winter transfer window(I’m from South Africa so the June-July transfer window is in winter, get over it), with targets such as Toby Alderweireld, Harry Maguire , Diego Godin and Kalidou Koulibaly amongst other.
Much like, the vast number of central defenders linked with Manchester United, a lot if managers have been linked with the job should Mourinho get the sacking.
The betting odds rank the managers as follows, from most lightly to the least lightly:
- Antonio Conte.
- Mauricio Pochettino.
- Carlo Ancelotti .
- Laurent Blanc.
Other name have been thrown out the hat with the likes of Diego Simeone at Athletico Madrid, Massimiliano Allegri at Juventus as well PSG’s Thomas Tuchel and Wale’s manager Ryan Giggs.
But we can instantly discount most names in this list simply because they are at established clubs and have a project that they are undertaking or just not ready for the Manchester United post. With Simeone, Allegri & Tuchel overseeing great squads and all with ambitions of winning a Champions League for their clubs, it would be near impossible for Manchester United to land any of them.
The same applies to Pochettino and Ancelotti as they are currently managing relatively stables European clubs, in Spurs & Napoli. Well as for Ryan Giggs this job is just too big even for a man so engraved into the clubs history & success.
The one man however who leads the race of being a Manchester United is former Madrid manager Zinedine Zidane.
Much like Pep Guardiola after leaving Barcelona, Zidane is also on a sabbatical after a historic 2.5 years at Madrid in which he won 9 trophies including those incredible 3 champions league in a row.
Although I don’t think that Zinedine Zidane would not be the correct tactical fit for Man United, simply because I can’t see him improving Smalling & Jones to elite defenders. That is to say that Man United does not have the personal to necessarily execute Zidane’s style of play.
However the respect that Zizou may command from the United players is immense, because of what he’s done as a player but more especially as for what he did with the aforementioned Real Madrid.
Zidane’s primary tactics at Real Madrid were a 4–3–3 or a 4–3–1–2, with fullback(Marcelo & Carvajal), United do have capable fullbacks or at least in Luke Shaw and would somewhat struggle at the right hand side of the pitch with Valencia or Young(they’re not good enough to be playing for Manchester United).
United also don’t have the ball playing centre-back pairing that would suit Zidane’s style of playing, they do have Eric Bailey but he does not have an established partner to enable him with defensive duties whilst also been a threat offensively.
To further get a deeper look at Zidane’s tactics, I highly recommend this video from Tifo Football[2], from which I curated most of this article from. Head over there and give them a subscribe, I promise you there content is the far the best when it comes to football.
