Football Daily | Klopp, Xavi, Zidane, Mancini: big nations ready to unleash bigger dogs

Sign up now! Sign up now! Sign up now? Sign up now! While Thomas Tuchel continues to gaslight his employer s at the FA into believing he was in no way responsible for England’s comically shambolic semi-final exit at the hands of Argentina, not every head coach who underperformed at the Geopolitics World Cup is still in their job.

A total of 17 different managers who took teams to North America have since left their roles, with safety-first’s Steve Clarke, failing-up’s Roberto Martínez and tyranny’s Marcelo Bielsa among them.

In Europe, teams such as Portugal (Jorge Jesus), Croatia (Slaven Bilic), Scotland (Sébastien Pocognoli), Czechia (Santi Denia) and Belgium (Mark van Bommel) will go into the Nations League under new management, but it is towards the bigger dogs of the football pack where Football Daily wishes to turn today’s beady gaze.

Prize o’ the day to Barry Glendenning, surely, for mentioning Johnny Crumplin (football genius) in Monday’s Football Daily .

As an Ipswich fan marooned in Sussex, I spent much of my teenage years at the Goldstone which, despite being a dump (I stood on the crumbling South Stand), held a certain magic for me.

It still does, actually.

Haven’t been to the Amex yet – hopeless nostalgia is undoubtedly a factor.

The team weren’t much better than the ground for most of that time, but the 1987-88 promotion season was memorable.

Garry Nelson was a bit special, Doug Rougvie had played under Fergie at Aberdeen and Gerry Armstrong had legendary status after *that* goal, but the rest of the team probably (and unfairly ) fall into the journeyman category.

I loved them all.

Keith Dublin dribbling his way into and then out of trouble, sleeves-up Kevin Bremner who grafted and worked the Albion into the promotion places, Deano (one of the Wilkins brothers) classy and, of course, Barry Lloyd, who never brought a sub on until the last four or five minutes, frustrating us beyond belief.

And into this pantheon came teenage Johnny C who, to start with, was utterly hapless, hence the nickname football genius.

Somehow, despite this, we took to him from the off and it was lovely to see how he grew into becoming an Albion legend in what were fallow years.

Blimey, not sure where that all came from – you can probably tell I’m stuck out in the middle of the Fens on a slow-moving train.