By Rotimi Oladipo
Luis de la Fuente of Spain just won the "coach of the year" award but I have some misgivings about it.
In a world cup year this award is almost always given to the world cup winning manager and that's what I disagree with.
How can you honour a manager that saw his team through 14 competitive matches (including qualifiers) to win the world cup over a manager that played more than 50 matches (back to back every week and sometimes midweek) to win the local league and the Champions league? How? Please make it make sense to me.
For 2025/26 season Luis Enrique is in focus here and before somebody says that the Ligue 1 is not that competitive let's throw Mikel Arteta into the mix. He won the most competitive league in the world and came second in the Champions League. He came second not because he was defeated over 90 minutes of football but his team fell to a penalty shootout. Hence he deserves to be mentioned in the same sentence as Enrique for the season in review.
Therefore, i believe that giving the manager of the year award to Fuente, for winning the world cup, is a disservice to the true essence of that award.
I, hereby, call on FIFA to scrap the present award and create two awards- the "national team manager of the year award" and the "club manager of the year award". This will effectively recognise the good works of clubside managers.
What are your thoughts?
PS: I think it is important for me to say that I am not an Arsenal fan. I know some readers would want to connect me to Arsenal FC because of my recognition of Arteta but I am only being an objective football fan.
For me, the beautiful game wins always.
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