RECENTLY, and just before he died, Len Shackleton, that marvellous maverick among post-war footballers, reissued his autobiography, Clown Prince of Soccer, with its notorious blank page headed, The Average Director's Knowledge of Soccer. It caused a furore at the time as you might well have expected, footballers of the epoch, not least Shack, the inside forward of genius, being little more than peons, bound hand and foot to clubs on derisory wages. And now? Well, the boot is almost literally on the other foot. Freed by the Bosman ruling, players can now call the tune. Someone like Shackleton, born much too early, alas, would be earning millions of pounds. And the directors?
Well, you still do sometimes wonder. Just look, for a start at Italy, and the phenomenon of the figlio di papa, an old, derisory Italian expression meaning "Daddy's boy". The spoiled and inadequate son of a rich and powerful father. Such as the Fiorentina President, Vittorio Cecchi Gori. His father, Mario, was an important figure in the Italian cinema world, building up a large fortune with his shrewd production of good, profitable films. He in time became President of the Fiorentine club and a successful one.
When he died, Vittorio took over. Bombastic, abrasive, boastful, confrontational; and those were his good points. He incensed his first manager, the highly experienced Gigi Radice, through bursting into the dressing room and reading the riot act to the team. Radice was soon gone. This summer, the club has wobbled on the verge of bankruptcy. Vittorio publicly made light of the fact that he had to appear before a judge to answer to the fact that there was the bagatelle of 130 billion lire odd to pay out. Plenty of clubs had such a deficit, he announced.
This begged the question of the fact that the total debt was 320 billion. And meantime he was desperately trying to sell off players; such as the tall goal-keeper, international Francesco Toldo, the elegant Portuguese midfielder, Rui Costa, who said he refused to be treated like a piece of meat and went off to Parma, and the prolific scorer, Enrico Chiesa.
Early last season, the recently appointed Turkish manager, Fatih Terim, who has just taken over at Milan, resigned in disgust. His part was angrily taken by the Fiorentina fans who hate Vittorio and wish he would sell the club. Even that Fiorentina idol as a former player, Giancarlo Antognoni, resigned in disgust, excoriating the general manager Mario Sconcerti whom he despised. That was indeed a strange appointment though I do have an interest to declare, having experienced Sconcerti's devious ways when working for the Roman sports daily which he edited.
Go further north and you find another figlio di papa but one rich enough to survive in the shape of Massimo Moratti. Mind you his father Argelo, Il gran petrolifero, the great oil magnate, was a hard act to follow. Go to the Inter training ground at Appiano Gentile outside Milan and you find a bust of Angelo with a nauseatingly abject tribute to him. Nauseating because, as I know all too well, having spent years investigating his finaglings as the Inter President, his bribery of referees, that the man was a ruthless manipulator. With all this, his Inter teams, under Helenio Herrera, did win Italian Championships and European Cups, did play pragmatic and effective football. What have Inter done under his son? Paid out millions of pounds in transfer fees, yet won absolutely nothing of consequence; gone through a string of hapless managers, the reductio ad absurdum coming at the start of last season when the sainted Marcello Lippi was sacked just 48 hours after Inter's first catastrophic Serie A game when they went down to little Reggina in Calabria.
Are things any better elsewhere? In England, for example? We all too well know about the West Ham fiasco and its domino effect. Suddenly the club decided to let go of its devoted and long serving manager, Harry Redknapp, once the team's erratic but popular outside-right. This after a season in which Hammers had knocked Manchester United out of the FA Cup on their own ground, and pocketed �18 million from Leeds United for Rio Ferdinand. True, the team's form had slipped away in the latter weeks of the season, true some of the players Harry bought with some of the Ferdinand money were disappointments. But then just look what happened!
The Hammers directors had no one lined up. They just hoped they would be able to lure Alan Curbishley, once their own player, from Charlton, but Alan said no. They then started making noises about bringing Alex McLeish from Hibernian, which infuriated the Edinburgh club, which announced that McLeish had been illegally approached. West Ham threw up their hands in horror, claiming they'd never gone near him, but a nod's as good as a wink to a blind horse, and why talk to him directly when you can put it all in the papers?
Sacking Harry made it inevitable that his assistant manager and brother-in-law, Frank Lampard senior, another ex Hammers player, would also resign. Which in turn meant the loss of the England international midfielder, Frank junior, sold for �11 million to Chelsea. The appointment as manager of the coach, Glenn Roeder appalled the fans and outraged the star turn, Italian Paolo di Canio, West Ham having previously announced that Roeder was not in the running!
It must be said that directors aren't always wrong. Long ago, Bayern Munich were interested in a centre forward called Gerd Muller, playing for the small Noerdlinger club. The coach, former Yugoslav star Zlatko Cjaicowski, didn't want him. He was, luckily, overruled by the club President. Muller went on to score an infinity of goals for club and country.
How often, though has it been said that managers are professionals, directors are amateurs? And how often has a powerful Chairman or President overruled his managers? When Chairman of Chelsea, the amiable Brain Mears once told me, in relation to his then manager Dave Sexton, that "managers have to be motivated, too." But it was his mistaken predecessor and father, Joe Mears, who, when Football League Chairman, meekly bowed to that body in 1955 and ruled Chelsea out of the first ever European Cup. They were Champions then. and though they later managed to qualify for the tournament, they've never been Champions since.
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