Source: Daily_Mail
MARTIN SAMUEL: Briatore is turning Rangers job into mission impossible
When Steve McClaren left Manchester United he had a choice of jobs and asked Sir Alex Ferguson for advice.
Don't pick a club, Ferguson told him, pick a chairman. McClaren went to Middlesbrough to work with the dependable Steve Gibson.
The biggest laugh of the week, therefore, concerns the rumours emanating from Queens Park Rangers that chairman Flavio Briatore wishes his seventh victim (sorry, manager) to be Sir Alex's talented son, Darren.
If Ferguson senior was so protective of a humble assistant inMcClaren, why would he let a cherished family member fall into theclutches of this idiot?
Briatore's brief yet chaotic time atLoftus Road has made Rupert Lowe's spells at Southampton look likemasterpieces of consistent vision.
Briatore has employed sixmanagers, including caretakers, in little more than 18 months, and themost recent one, Paulo Sousa, lasted 26 games.
With Briatore in charge, that should have qualified him for some form of long-service carriage clock.
His predecessor, Iain Dowie, took charge of 15 games, John Gregory and Mick Harford got five games each, while Luigi De Canio made it to 35 games, almost a whole season, before he got the bullet. This is the equivalent of five or six seasons at another club because one match at QPR equates, much like dog years, to seven with a rational man in charge.
The conceit of Briatore is such that leaks from QPR now put promising young managers in the frame for the vacancy, as if anyone of substance would chance his career working for the regime at Loftus Road.
What could Darren Ferguson gain from association with Briatore, apart from a pay-off?
He would be better off seeing the job through at Peterborough United, biding his time for the opportunity to work at a bigger club with a sensible owner.
Even the unemployed should beware Briatore. Paul Ince is in the frame, but while he might be keen to work in football again, he is not that desperate, surely?
The same goes for Dennis Wise. Having just left a nut house at Newcastle United, this career move would qualify him for a strait jacket more than a tracksuit.
Many in football claim Wise was doing a creditable job at Newcastle's academy before being overtaken by events. Why would he check into another asylum?
If even half the stories circulating about Briatore's stewardship at QPR are true then any credible manager would run a mile. It has been suggested Briatore has phoned in from Malaysia to insist on half-time substitutions and summoned a manager from the field where he was warming up the players to tell him what the starting XI should be.
Somany sources paint a similar picture that it is hard to believe they are all fantasists, even if Briatore denies picking the team.
His protests, however, are increasingly hollow.
'If the results are good, nobody puts their nose in,' he says. 'I have an opinion on things because we have invested a lot of money.'
That is the point, though. Briatore and friends have not invested a lot of money. Not by the standards of modern football, not compared to, say, Roman Abramovich or even Mike Ashley, not compared to what is about to happen at Manchester City.
Jurgen Klinsmann (right), the Bayern Munich manager, announced he was going to fight fire with fire in Barcelona last week. His team were 4-0 down at half-time.'My dad's motto was fight fire with fire,' said Harry Hill, the comedian.'That's why they threw him out of the fire brigade.'
Briatore has helped clear the debts and provided adequate investmentfor ordinary Championship players; which is why QPR remain an ordinaryChampionship team.
The total commitment of Briatore and Bernie Ecclestone to QPR isestimated in the region of £20million, although some of Briatore'sshare has already been palmed off to Lakshmi Mittal, said to be thefifth richest man in the world.
Indeed, there are some very wealthy citizens at QPR; not that youwould know it from anything bar the boardroom egos.
And one imaginesDarren's dad knows exactly how to deal with them.
Sometimes the rules of golf defy all logic. Rory McIlroy failed to get out of a bunker at the 18th at Augusta National on Friday and angrily kicked the sand.
This constitutes testing the condition of a hazard and carries a two-shot penalty, meaning McIlroy signed for the wrong score, which is punishable by disqualification.
After a lengthy meeting lasting several hours, the competitions committee allowed him to continue, invoking a course technicality that allows a player to smooth out his footprints in the sand.
If this was McIlroy's chosen technique for levelling, you certainly wouldn't trust him to lay a patio.
Meanwhile, at the 15th, Padraig Harrington stood over a putt, at which moment an unexpectedly strong gust of wind blew across the green, moving the ball.
As he had already adopted the address position and grounded his putter he was judged to have played a shot at the cost of one stroke.
A birdie opportunity turned into a bid to save par despite the fact that, unlike McIlroy, the incident was entirely out of Harrington's control.
Tom Watson, winner of nine majors, including two Masters championships, once said that golf was never meant to be a fair game. It should make sense, though, right?
Welsh retreatFollowing the attack on referee Mike Dean during the match against Swansea City at Ninian Park, it would appear Cardiff City have been taken Welsh again.
How very convenient that every time a disciplinary judgment must be made, the Welsh members of the Football League can retreat across the national border and discuss the matter with old friends at the Football Association of Wales.
No statement has been made on whether Cardiff will face action after Dean was struck by a coin, and possible penalties range from a fine to ground closure.
Considering, however, that a riot after an FA Cup match between Cardiff and Leeds seven years ago, which included a pitch invasion and a hail of missiles aimed at visiting players, was judged by the FAW to be worthy of a £20,000 penalty, what are the odds?
Los Angeles Galaxy have lined up Chris Birchall, out of contract at Brighton and Hove Albion this summer, as cover for David Beckham. And to think there were those that doubted the standard of Major League Soccer.
Steve Bruce, the Wigan Athletic manager, is to hold talks with Amr Zaki, his striker, following his return to the club. It is the fifth time Zaki (right) has reported late from international duty with Egypt. What is there left to say except goodbye?
AND WHILE WE'RE AT IT...The elementary school featured in the very funny, very adult, very politically incorrect cartoon South Park has one ethnic student.
His first name is Token, his second Black. Get it?
The proposals for the Twenty20 England Premier League include provision for four overseas players at each county, one of whom must be Indian to salve the demands of television companies in the sub-continent.
Maybe they should have Token written on their shirts, too.
This Angel is no fool Angel Maria Villar Llona, president of the Spanish Football Federation, is no fool.
Informed that FIFA would not look kindly on joint bids to host the 2018 World Cup, he dropped neighbouring Portugal like a sandbag from a falling hot air balloon.
There will now be a single group game played across Spain's border, a token gesture to placate their former partners.
From here, England have a serious rival for FIFA's affections in Europe and in Villar Llona, a member of the FIFA executive since 1998 and a FIFA vice-president, they are up against a far shrewder player of football
politics than the Football Association's over-hyped Lord Pleasedman and his band of Westminster cronies.
Sepp Blatter, president of FIFA (right), loves to pontificate on football's moral issues, but is not as keen to put in the hard yards.
The reason Premier League clubs do their shopping in the youth academies of Europe is because FIFA set the transfer fees, which are invariably low.
At home, the selling club establishes the price, which can be costly for a young player.
This inconsistency is significant, with Lazio protesting over the way Manchester United took Federico Macheda from their academy at the age of 16.
It could be solved by the introduction of a statutory compensation fee of £10million for any academy player below the age of 18 (which Macheda could have all but repaid in two matches).
Would FIFA do something like that? Probably not, but Blatter will no doubt have a very good sound bite on the subject.
Figures revealed in Manchester United's latest accounts give cause for concern, but the speculation that Cristiano Ronaldo (right) will have to be sold in the summer to service the debt does not take one factor into account.
Had United remained a plc, Ronaldo would already be a Real Madrid player.
A public company is responsible to its shareholders and there is no way an offer in the region of £80million last summer would not have been placed before the board.
In the circumstances, given that the player was agitating to leave, it would have been irresistible.
Instead, the Glazers adopted their default position on football matters since taking control: they asked Sir Alex Ferguson what he thought, and acted accordingly.
That is what will happen this summer, too. It is why, for all the anxiety about the future, he continues to back them.
Lost in space In all likelihood, England will be made to play Ukraine in Dnepropetrovsk on October 10. The official reason is that the main stadium in Kiev is being renovated, although privately it is believed the aim is to make it tougher for Fabio Capello's men by taking the match to the provinces.
Dnepropetrovsk is Ukraine's third biggest city and was closed under Soviet rule, due to its significance as the home of Yuzhmash, a space and ballistic missile designer.
It is unimaginable there will still be anything on the game from England's point of view, but Croatia could have plenty to lose from Capello's voyage into the unknown.
Rupert Lowe (right), the former chairman and chief executive of Southampton, was on Sky News this week telling Jeff Randall that football has been badly run as an industry. Well, he would know. If Southampton are relegated this season it will be for only the third time since 1953, and Lowe has presided over two of those seasons. Surprisingly, he has not ruled out future involvement. 'I wouldn't back away,' he said. 'If I could, I would definitely help.'Maybe he is taking over at Portsmouth.
'We were going to pretend Gareth Southgate was fit when he wasn't. I had no qualms about that... Gareth made me laugh when he said he found it hard to tell lies. I told him they weren't lies.' - Glenn Hoddle: My 1998 World Cup Story.
Leaving aside another rather personal interpretation of morality from Glenn Hoddle, my recollection is that Southgate (above) did not tell lies to the media that day. Lewis Hamilton please note. Being a sportsman does not mean handing in personal scruples, like your coat, at the door. You can still be a team player and your own man.
