If, like me, you spend every other Saturday afternoon watching football which is about as far from Real Madrid as PVC is from real leather, your eye may wander from time to time - to your feet, or to the heavens, or maybe to the guy three rows in front in a silver Morph suit and a snapback Oakland Raiders cap (I've never actually seen that, but I'm sure I will).
Eventually your eye will alight on the dugout. That's where the jokers who pick the teams can be seen flapping their arms and trying to figure out why the flesh-and-blood players are so much worse than the ones in FIFA Manager on the Wii.
And what else do you see in the dugout? Typically, either a suit or a tracksuit. That's because there are only two types of "look" for the Scottish football manager: "ageing ned in sports casual wear" or "ageing ned on his way to a court appearance". Style doesn't come into it.
What makes some managers prefer tracksuits to suits? Maybe they draw lots at manager school. Maybe they have fraternities, like at American universities. Maybe there's a sorting hat like in Harry Potter which settles down on the bonce of every wannabe Fergie and squawks "Tracksuit!" or "Suit!" or maybe just "IT guy!", which means they can add a pullover and novelty socks if they want to.
The tracksuit wearers obviously have to be clothed in team colours, which is why you never see one in a Jack Wills hoodie and low-slung Juicy Couture joggers (more's the pity). The suit wearers have a little more leeway, though they tend to stick with black. I can't recall seeing a brown-suited manager so it's safe to assume there's nobody prowling the technical area in a white suit, spats and two-tone Oxford brogues. Maybe it'll happen if Will.i.am buys East Fife and installs himself as head coach.
That's not to say there are no stylish managers, though they tend to belong to the suit-wearing wing of the party. Andre Villas Boas, sacked last week as manager of Tottenham Hotspur, always has a touch of the red carpet about him and of course there's fellow Portuguese Jose Mourinho, whose iconic raincoat is now in the Chelsea FC museum. Robert Martinez of Everton looks like the best-dressed king Spain never had, and among the managers in the top European leagues the fashion for collar-length hair and crisp, white tie-less shirts makes everyone look like Birgitte Nyborg's ex-husband in Borgen. Except Borussia Dortmund's Jurgen Klopp, who looks like a Formula One geek.
All of which begs the question: which form of dressing gives a manager the upper hand? Sure, the suit imparts class, but the tracksuit hints that if he needed to, the wearer could be on the pitch and playing in a flash. In a sport increasingly dominated by statistics, there must be an answer. Is there, for example, an optimum tie colour - or can any scruffbag win a match if he gets to grips with FIFA Manager?
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