McClaren to enrol at managers' summer school
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Your support makes all the difference.Six Premiership managers will have to go back to school this summer if they are to keep their jobs next season. The sextet include Steve McClaren, the Middlesbrough manager, who will today join up with the England squad as Sven Goran Eriksson's head coach.
As of next season all Premiership managers will have to either hold the Uefa Professional Licence, football's leading qualification for coaches, or the Football Association Coaching Diploma. This is a bridging qualification which allows current managers time to acquire the Pro Licence before the 2010/11 season when it will be mandatory for Premiership managers.
The diploma will be automatically awarded to coaches with 10 years' management experience, like Sir Alex Ferguson. McClaren, along with Steve Bruce, Glenn Roeder, Gary Megson, Sam Allardyce and Gordon Strachan, his counterparts at Birmingham, West Ham, Bolton, West Bromwich and Southampton respectively, neither has sufficient experience nor holds the Pro Licence. The six will have to attend a five-day residential course at the University of Warwick in June to gain the diploma and continue working in the Premiership. So will unqualified managers of newly promoted clubs.
Ironically, it is McClaren's England commitments which have prevented him taking the Pro Licence. A noted student of the game he was due to attend the FA's inaugural course in the summer but was at the World Cup with Eriksson. Like Megson, Roeder, Allardyce and Strachan he already holds the A licence, until now the highest qualification available in England. Bruce is thought to possess a B licence.
The move to mandatory qualifications, which it is hoped will be extended to include the Football League, follows years of lobbying by Howard Wilkinson, the FA's Technical Director. "It is overdue," he said yesterday. "People have come to recognise this is a professional position requiring great expertise and to be able to walk into it without any training or qualification is a nonsense. Education, experience and knowledge come at a very high price."
After a spell when it was fashionable to promote players directly from the dressing-room to the dug-out leading clubs have turned to more experienced managers. Premiership chairman, who zealously guard the right to make their own mistakes, may also have been swayed by the knowledge that the sport's European governing body, Uefa, will insist on managers being qualified, to Pro Licence or Diploma level, as a condition of entry into their competitions from 2004.
England have certainly lagged behind mainstream Europe. There are more coaches with Pro Licences at Bayern Munich than in the dug-outs of the entire Premiership. The change in mood was underlined by the appointment of the much-qualified Eriksson as England manager. His predecessors, Glenn Hoddle and Kevin Keegan, possessed only a Preliminary Badge between, a qualification, now much overhauled, which then required a few weekends practical learning and minimal written work. The Professional Licence takes a year, mainly part-time but including two residential segments.
"The FA would not now consider appointing someone who is not qualified," added Wilkinson. Nor, in future, will Premiership chairmen.
BADGES OF HONOUR PREMIERSHIP QUALIFICATIONS
Premiership managers holding Uefa Professional Licence
Gérard Houllier (Liverpool)
David Moyes (Everton)
Claudio Ranieri (Chelsea)
Jean Tigana (Fulham)
Arsène Wenger (Arsenal)
Will be awarded FA Coaching Diploma by dint of experience
Alan Curbishley (Charlton)
Sir Alex Ferguson (Manchester United)
Glenn Hoddle (Tottenham Hotspur)
Kevin Keegan (Manchester City)
Peter Reid (Sunderland)
Sir Bobby Robson (Newcastle United)
Graeme Souness (Blackburn Rovers)
Graham Taylor (Aston Villa)
Terry Venables (Leeds United)
Will need to qualify for FA
Coaching Diploma
*Sam Allardyce (Bolton Wanderers)
Steve Bruce (Birmingham City)
Steve McClaren (Middlesbrough)
Gary Megson (West Brom)
Glenn Roeder (West Ham United)
Gordon Strachan (Southampton)
*Allardyce may be awarded diploma having coached Limerick in Ireland as well as completing eight and a half years' management in England by the end of this season.
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