Not a Nice Man

A week or so back we posted a few comments from Sunderland keeper Craig Gordon describing how the Black Cats players enjoy the chance to kick Roy Keane when he gets involved in 5-a-side. They might’ve thought Keano was a hard coach, but even the great leg-breaker has nothing on this fearsome chap. He is in fact our number one football bastard, a man who was quite literally a lawless, inhumane tyrant.

Yes, Uday Hussein was Saddam’s son, but his official title was Head of the Iraqi Olympic Committee, meaning that he oversaw all sports development in the country for a good few years, distributing what he saw as reasonable punishment to athletes whenever their performances failed to meet his somewhat lofty expectations. According to widespread reports, he had a team of torturers who beat and caned the soles of footballers’ feet with electrical cable while they did press-ups. Sitting up in the stands, Uday reportedly kept scorecards with written instructions on how many times each player should be lashed after a poor performance. All of sudden Frank Lampard’s decision to turn down an offer to switch allegiance to Iraq becomes all the clearer.

One defector further reports that jailed soccer players were forced to repeatedly just kick a concrete ball after failing to reach the 1994 World Cup finals, while another claims that underwhelming forwards who failed to score were dragged through a gravel pit and subsequently immersed in, ahem, bodily fluids to infect their wounds! Iraq's captain at the time, Habib Jaffar, has recently described an additional bizarre punishment: he said that he was once made to climb a 20-foot ladder and leap into a vat of sewage over and over again in front of Hussein; now bear in mind that’s after he’d already been imprisoned and had the feet-whipping thing. If all that provided insufficient motivation for the players, Hussein also was known to give obscenely threat-laden half-time team talks through a speaker phone wired into the dressing room. Can you imagine that? You’re a goal down but on the offensive, getting fired up before the second-half, when all of a sudden a disembodied voice just booms out:“if you don’t win this game I will burn your children alive in front of you.” Not ideal.

For completeness’ sake then, other non-football-related allegations leveled at Hussein during his time in office include:

• The regular kidnapping and raping of young Iraqi girls, often in front of their husbands before killing them both

• Pretty selfish stock-piling in an era of widespread privation. When troops captured his mansion in Baghdad, they genuinely found a personal zoo (stocked to the brim with lions and cheetahs), an underground garage full of more than a thousand luxury cars, paintings glorifying him and his mother with Saddam, Cuban cigars inscribed with his name, and finally millions of dollars worth of fine wines, imported liquor and heroin

• The use of an iron maiden on persons who irritated him just for his own personal amusement i.e. he’d lock them in a cabinet and cut them, not just play them noisy 80s rock

• Actually driving a pink Rolls-Royce

You’ll be pleased to hear that Hussein was (perhaps justly) murdered horribly a few years ago when futuristic US helicopters and 200 ultra-hard Marines raided his palace armed with rocket launchers and 50-cal machine guns. To be fair to him though, the standard of the Iraq national team has dropped significantly since he stopped keeping them in jail infected with hepatitis…

Get Your Own Back

It goes without saying that everyone at some time or another has wanted to inflict some serious pain on their boss. Even if my boss was, say, that girl on the internet that can swallow a cucumber whole, I reckon ultimately I would still get pretty annoyed with it all and just want to be left alone. Imagine then if your boss was Roy Keane, one of the most fearsome, aggressive and hard-to-please men in the business, not to mention an Irishman. He demands 100% effort all the time, hates losing, and certainly does not accept tame excuses about missing trains or being hungover. In other words, he’s the antithesis of a perfect boss.

However, when he joins in with training at Sunderland, he’s apparently fair game on the 5-a-side pitch. Craig Gordon told The Daily Mirror today how the Black Cats relish getting stuck into their manager on the odd occasion he takes part in the kickabouts, knowing that he wouldn’t dare risk retaliating and injuring one of his own players. It is their brief moment in the sun, before being screamed back into the underground incestuous dungeon that is the dressing room for the rest of eternity. Well, the rest of that week anyway.

Gordon candidly revealed the truth behind the curtain: “Most of the time the manager tends to stand back and watch training, but now and again he takes part in the five-a-sides. He tackles, and people put tackles in on him because they see it as a chance to kick the manager - and you don't get that chance very often!” He innocently continued: “It's a game of football and if the ball is there to be won, you go for it, no matter who you're tackling. I'm sure the manager would not expect anything else from the players.”

Keane has reportedly spent the summer picking up coaching tips from the New Zealand All Blacks rugby team so expect Sunderland to be a fiercer proposition next season as they look to build on their impressive first season back in the big time. Also don’t be surprised if he comes back with a facial tattoo, and opens each game with what appears to be an epileptic fit directed menacingly at the opposition.

Affirmative Action

Those of you with keen memories might recall a little earlier in the year we ran a quite excellent piece talking about the prevalence/lack of black managers throughout the four professional football leagues in this country. It was quite shocking, but not altogether surprising really when you think about it. Today however, a tiny, microscopic blow has been struck for racial equality in the Premier League, because as we approach the 16^th season since the shift from First Division, we finally have another black manager! Yes, it is official: Paul Ince has officially become the new Blackburn Rovers gaffer, following Jean Tigana (Fulham; 2000 – 2003) and Ruud Gullet (Chelsea and Newcastle; 1996 – 1999) as just the third black manager in the history of the Greatest League in the World™.

Ince has been given a three-year deal with Rovers, following in the footsteps of ex-partner-in-crime (not literally you racists!) Mark Hughes at Ewood Park. In just two previous seasons in the managerial quagmire, Ince has proved himself to be an excellent boss in the lower leagues, firstly keeping a seeming-doomed Macclesfield in League Two, before then moving on to the MK Dons where he tasted both promotional and Johnstone’s Paint Trophy success. These achievements also attracted the interest of Leicester City, who made an official approach to the Dons for Ince’s services earlier this month. However, it seems that Rovers wanted the former England captain more than anyone else, even brushing aside ex-England flop Steve McClaren and ex-Newcastle flop Sam Allardyce to get their man. Ince is the latest in an ever-increasing line of former Manchester United stars who played under Sir Alex Ferguson to manage in the Premier League. With Mark Hughes now at Manchester City, Steve Bruce at Wigan, and Roy Keane at Sunderland, it is definitely going to be lively when all their teams collide next season.

Former Blackburn striker Kevin Gallacher told the BBC that Rovers targeted Ince because they were looking for someone enthusiastic and with a big pull. “Paul knew that he wanted to come,” Gallacher said, “he's got the hunger and desire in his belly to be a good manager. He showed that at Macclesfield by how he managed to keep them up, and he brought a couple of trophies to MK Dons, so…hopefully he can bring some of that luck with him to Blackburn.” Gallacher added: “If Paul can keep the ship floating, keep the good players at the club, continue with the good work Mark (Hughes) has done and add his little bit in, Blackburn can only get stronger.” Understandably, job one for Ince is to keep David Bentley and Roque Santa Cruz at Ewood, but with an on-field and off-field reputation as good as anyone else in this country over the last decade, it’d take a brave man to suggest he won’t be able to convince his flighty star players to stay.

Things however are not looking so bright for another black player from about the same era with similar aspirations to push on to top flight management. John Barnes, perhaps the most decorated English black player of all time, has been searching for vacancies in the lower leagues without success for some time now. “I've applied for numerous jobs and sometimes I haven't even had the courtesy of a reply to my application letter,” Barnes told BBC Sport. “Perhaps I could understand it if I was applying for jobs at the top level but these were clubs in League One.” The whole process has left the former Liverpool star frustrated and disillusioned, convinced that still there is just not a system of equal opportunities for black professionals within football.

“I believe the situation for black managers is like it was for black players back in the 1970s,” he stated. “Black players used to be put out on the wing because it was deemed they could run fast but not think too well. They weren't trusted to be a playmaker in central midfield or to wear the captain's armband. Now I think there is an analogous situation in management (where) Chairmen don't believe we can do the top managerial jobs.” Turning to describe the situation experienced by Luther Blissett, a former England international who played abroad at the top level, Barnes continued: “He has been applying for manager's jobs in the Football League for 15 years and not got anywhere. This is all about opportunities.”

Keith Alexander, who succeeded Ince at Macclesfield, is currently the only other black manager in the Football League, but more worryingly, the Warwick Business School recently released statistics showing that there are only seven other black coaches of any capacity in the leagues. This constitutes just 1% of the total number of coaches operating at all levels, despite the fact that more than 20% of all players are currently black.

Barnes is obviously full of praise for Ince’s achievement, but is cautious about holding him up as some kind of archetype for all black managers being capable of the same level of success: “If he doesn't succeed, does that count against all black managers? I don't think so. Just as if he does succeed it doesn't mean all black managers are good.” Still, the admiring respect can’t help but shine through Barnes, as it does also STT: “He has done things the hard way, proving himself with Macclesfield and MK Dons; while Roy Keane and Gareth Southgate were given chances at the top, he went to the bottom club in the league.”

Vatreno Ludilo

Here at STT we love Slaven Bilic for so many reasons, not just because he has a cool name, speaks a hundred languages, and smokes. If you ever needed convincing though, look no further than his preparations for guiding his Croatia side into Euro 2008. While plenty of other coaches are wasting their time scouting other teams and drawing up complex tactical playbooks that their players won’t ever understand, Bilic has been in the studio with his rock band Rawbau recording a new anthem for the Croatians to walk out to at this summer’s Championships.

“Bilic told us in January that he had a song that sounded good. The song is very catchy, a classic rock tune and I believe that fans will like it and that it will become their hymn,” Vlatka Bartulovic, a spokeswoman for song-producers Zagreb brewery, said today.

Unfortunately the track, geniusly titled Fiery Madness, will not be officially premiered until next month, but check out this ropey youtube clip of a recent live performance here, or alternatively peep Rawbau’s Myspace site for a tantilising glimpse of what the anthem might sound like properly mastered. Bilic himself is the writer and lead guitarist, drawing influences from a wide range of talent such as the Foo Fighters, the Rolling Stones and Finnish hard-rock monsters, Lordi. He claims the song captures the true spirit for Croatia, but just from the above live clip, STT would go even further and say that it simply captures the spirit of ‘awesomeness.’

When asked by Sky whether he has plans to release the song as a single outside of his native country, Bilic modestly shook his head saying "we are not U2." I know which group i'd rather have play at my house party though; a load of Eastern Europeans who like booze and tattoos, or five has-beens who'd turn the music down and encourage me to recycle my shoes. Tough choice.