McClaren Ready to Begin Rehabilitation

By: Daryl | December 6th, 2007

Steve Mac looking for work Poor old Steve McClaren. He made a mess of what should have been an easy Euro 2008 qualifying group for England and now he’s got nowhere to go in the morning. He got the boot (and a healthy pay off) on November 22nd, but it seems there’s only so much daytime television worth watching.

“It’s only been two weeks, but it seems like a lifetime,” said the man with shiny teeth. “It’ll take me a while, it’ll take the fans a while and it’ll take the country a while to get over the disappointment of not qualifying. But I’m a coach, I’m a football manager. I’ve worked at the top level now for a long, long time, and I don’t want that to end. I want that to continue.”

The question is… who’s going to want him? It’s not that McClaren is suddenly incapable of managing a football team. It’s more that if anyone hired him right now they’d also be hiring a shitstorm of negative publicity. No English football fan is going to want the man who broke England associated with their club on a daily basis.

McClaren would be wise to take a leaf from his mentor’s book. Sven Goran Eriksson was smart enough to know he wasn’t popular in England post World Cup 2006, so he took an entire year away to let everyone calm down. Now he’s at Man City and proving everybody wrong. So if McClaren is smart he won’t rush back into anything. He’ll let the storm pass and wait until English football fans are ready to forgive him. About ten years should do it.

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Category: England, English Premier League

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Daryl

I agree that he's not necessarily a bad coach, but he's clueless with the media. PR guru Max Clifford even dropped him as a client, implying that he couldn't work with him.

And as Brian says, he's always in the news lateley when a wise man would be keeping quiet.
Laurie

Brian, an Alexi Lalas complex, perhaps?
Brian

What I can't understand is why he can't seem to stay out of the papers for three days at a stretch. You'd think after he was fired he would have decided to lay low for a few weeks, but instead I have the impression that he's pacing up and down the sidewalk outside the BBC and pouncing on anyone with a camera. Ian, I agree that he's not really a terrible coach, but he seems to have a worrisome lust for attention.
bluemeanies

New York is looking for a head coach. As a DC united fan I think he'd fit their circus well and might bring them back to the status of #1 disfunctional circus in the league after LA and RSL have taken their spots.
Ian

I'd like to see McClaren head out of England for a little while, take a job with a club in a smaller league somewhere. I don't think he's a terrible coach - he was just a terrible fit for England. He might have to start small with a small league, or even a lower division club, but he'll find a place somewhere.