Five managers who signed former team-mates with varying results

Ian Watson
Cesc Fabregas, Thierry Henry, Steven Gerrard, Philippe Coutinho, Fernando Torres, Diego Simeone.

Steven Gerrard and Philippe Coutinho will be hoping their reunion goes rather better than that of Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas, and they don’t fall out like El Nino and El Cholo…

 

Wayne Rooney and Ravel Morrison
Rooney never played in the same Manchester United side as Morrison, but England’s greatest goalscorer, like everyone else in Greater Manchester, knew all about the prodigious talent coming through the Red Devils’ ranks.

“He was brilliant in training… we all thought he was going to be top level,” Rooney said of Morrison on the UTD podcast. For a variety of reasons, Morrison never got close to fulfilling his potential but when the chance came last summer for Rooney to sign his former team-mate for Derby, the manager seized the opportunity.

And there were obviously no grudges from an episode which saw Rooney smash up Morrison’s phone after the senior player thought the youngster had the temerity to take his Blackberry off charge.

“I smashed his phone up at one point. He came into the first-team dressing room when he was in the reserves and my phone was on charge. He took it off and put his on. I thought it was one of the other lads so when I saw it was one of the reserves, I just smashed the phone up!”

 

Diego Simeone and Fernando Torres
Simeone and Torres lined up in the same Atletico side, when the Argentina midfielder returned to Madrid in 2003, playing a season and a half behind the prolific Spain striker.

Simeone went back to Argentina with Racing while Torres left Spain for Liverpool where he tore up the Premier League. Then he moved to Chelsea where he really didn’t.

By the time Torres was ready to leave Chelsea, Simeone had gone back to Atletico as manager and offered the centre-forward the chance to return to his boyhood club, initially on loan from AC Milan. Torres’ unveiling drew a crowd of 45,000 in 2015 but there was no fairytale.

Their history didn’t offer Torres any favours from Simeone. After a positive start back at Atletico, Torres found himself increasingly marginalised, with speculation that Simeone wasn’t keen on the adoration the forward received from Atletico fans. In the end, it was a terse parting; when Simeone was asked at a press conference if he was keen to keep Torres the following season, “no” was the simple, abrupt reply.

At the end of the 2017-18 season, the Atletico owner summoned the pair to his house. “That meeting was called because Simeone gave a terrible press conference,” Torres said in ‘Fernando Torres: The Last Symbol’ on Amazon. “I went to that meeting to listen because I understood he might be ready to offer an apology or explanation but that’s not what happened.”

Simeone offered his take: “The club idol creates a lot of attention but as coaches we have to juggle that with what is best for the team.

“It was a very sincere and honest conversation that we had. We had the opportunity to give each other a hug because he was very sincere with me and I was sincere when it came to my thoughts about him. So after that we got to a place where we can no look at each other and talk because nobody held back.”

Which is handy because the pair are back together at Atletico, where Torres coaches the club’s Under-19s.

 

Ole Gunnar Solskjaer and Cristiano Ronaldo

“There’s a few players I’ve played with that I’d love to have in my team. I’d love the player Roy Keane. I’m not sure I could manage him, though, but I’d sign him every day of the week.

“Roy was so influential, but then again, I played with Cristiano. You’d take him in your team for sure.”

That was Solskjaer last March, a few months before he signed him from Juventus.

Not that it did him much good. Ronaldo became A Problem for Solskjaer, according to some people, though things would surely have got much worse much more quickly for the ex-United boss without the 36-year-old’s goals.

 

Roy Keane and Kieran Richardson
If you’d have asked Keane which of his former team-mates he would have wished to sign for Sunderland when he took over in 2007, it is unlikely that Richardson would have been one of the first names on the ex-Man Utd captain’s list.

Febian Brandy, a former academy player at United, recalled for Training Ground Guru one confrontation between Keane, the no-nonsense skipper, and Richardson, the cocky young upstart, in the car park at Carrington.

“I was about 13 when Richardson had just made the first-team squad. he came into training one day with the car roof down and his music blaring out. He thought he was the man.

“Unfortunately for him, Roy Keane was walking into the car park. He pointed at him and said: ‘Turn your music off and go home Don’t come back here today.”

Keane, as we know, can hold a grudge but not in Richardson’s case. He signed him for Sunderland when the Black Cats were promoted in 2007. “I’m well aware of what a good player and a good lad he is,” said Keane at the time.

When Keane left Sunderland, Dwight Yorke received a reply of ‘go f*** yourself’ when he texted his commiserations. Richardson received a rather more positive response: “Keep your head down and good things will happen for you.”

 

Thierry Henry and Cesc Fabregas
The former Arsenal team-mates were reunited at Monaco. Not for long, though…

Henry took over as Monaco boss in October 2018 after Leonardo Jardim paid the price for a wretched start to the season. It was Henry’s first managerial appointment and the former France striker struggled back at his former club.

Henry made Fabregas one of his first signings as a coach, paying Chelsea just shy of £9million for the midfielder in January 2019. But Fabregas played only three games before Henry was given the shove to be replaced by the returning Jardim.

“Football doesn’t wait for anyone,” said Fabregas in response to Henry’s dismissal. “Unfortunately, maybe he didn’t have the right time to make all his plans.” Henry gathered only 15 points from 21 matches, leaving Fabregas and Jardim to drag them from second-bottom to just outside the bottom three come the end of the season.

 

F365 Features Cristiano Ronaldo

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