The Beautiful Game

Rossoneri legend Clarence Seedorf recently returned to the club for a second spell after his initial 10 year duration. This time though, he returns in the capacity of a boss. Following a disastrous season (By the standards set by Milan in previous seasons), 2nd year running, the club saw the departure of 2010-11 season title winning manager Max Allegri. The club seemed to be in a state of turmoil. The sacking of Allegri meant Seedorf's retirement as a player of Brazilian side Botafogo. A daunting task awaited an inexperienced Seedorf (in managerial terms at least) as he now, at the helm of the club prepared to rebuild the Rossoneri from their shambolic recent run of results and tried to salvage something from the season. It had not been a happy time for former Milan players in the managerial role, as Clarence's teammate Gennaro Gattuso found out after taking over Palermo and being sacked immediately. For Seedorf, it posed an even bigger challenge to fulfill the dre...

DATE: 26 th Nov 2013 STAGE: Champions League Group Stage (Match day 5) RESULT: Ajax 2-1 Barcelona For Ajax fans, this was a memorable victory. For Barca fans, this was the first blip of their amazing season so far. For football purists, this was the Old School beating the New ones. Amazingly, both teams started with 7 home grown players in the starting line-up. Though much has already been said about the famed ‘La Masia’ academy of Barcelona, it wouldn’t be wrong to say that they would retrace their roots back to the famous Ajax model. The fine academy of Ajax called ‘DE TOEKOMST’ or ‘THE FUTURE’ was built to facilitate the basic goal of the club to bring through at least 3 players into the first team every two years, anything less than that would be seen as a failure for the club. Ever since the advent of the ‘Total Football’ concept under the great Dutch manager Rinus Michels, the club has been going forward with this ideology and the adoption of the single philos...

José Mourinho, regarded by many as the best manager and one of the greatest managers of all time, is the current manager of Chelsea FC. Even though often surrounded by media controversies, no one doubts managerial credentials of the self-proclaimed ‘The Special One’. After a misfired career as central midfielder in the 2 nd Portuguese division, he turned towards managing clubs. Starting out as an interpreter for Sir Bobby Robson, he impressed with his managerial periods at S.L. Benfica and U.D. Leiria., taking the latter to their highest ever league finish. José moved back to Porto in 2002 as F.C. Porto manager winning the Portuguese league twice, two domestic cups, UEFA CUP in 2002-03(currently known as UEFA Europa League) and UEFA Champions League in 2003-04.Mourinho’s Porto win against Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United foreshadowed a move to Premier League club Chelsea FC, an interesting prospect at that time, where he called himself ‘The Special One’. At Chelsea FC, ...