Zidane to QPR?

Is Zidane QPR bound?

The English football season still has couple of weeks to go but already the frenzied summer activity of transfer deals and managerial swaps has begun.

In one of the strangest stories I’ve heard in a while, Zinedine Zidane is being rumoured as a successor to Luigi De Canio who parted ways with QPR earlier today.  I can and I can’t believe it as the owners are incredibly ambitious and have lots of money to spend if not necessarily waste as they’ll want to see a return on it.

What better way to bring attention to a team who are the currently relatively anonymous compared to their past glories than bring in one of the most famous names and faces in world football to lead the revolution.  Sure he’s got no managerial experience but that doesn’t often matter to these owners with little experience of the industry.  This will certainly be an interesting one to follow over the coming weeks.

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In totally expected news, Frank Rijkaard will be replaced by Pep Guardiola at the end of the season. This smacks of a Johan Cruyff appointment (who as we all know is the real power broker in Barcelona) and it’s got to be considered a risky move to appoint a 37-year-old with one season of fourth division management under his belt.  He’s a club icon so the fans will be lenient but with a number of high profile players almost certain to leave this summer (Ronaldinho, Eto’o, possibly Henry) then it could be the worst possible start to a managerial career.  On the other hand he is about to inherit a team full of young talent like Iniesta, Bojan, Dos Santos - assuming he rejects Shinawatra’s dodgy bundles of cash, Messi and at the same time losing the egos that were pulling the club in different directions.  When you look at it that way you wonder what more somebody could ask for.

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Talking of Dr Thaksin, the Taiwanese circus at Man City continues to entertain.  They made an interesting point on the Th Game podcast (see links) that Shinawatra only intends to be at the club for around three years and his sole aim is to increase the profile of the club and make it more valuable in that time frame so that he can make a buck when he sells it on.  That certainly explains his determination to sign Ronaldinho despite nobody at the club wanting him.

Also with the players seemingly on the verge of mutiny (Dunne, Johnson, Hart and Richards have all been linked with moves in the past few days) then you have to wonder what any manager would find attractive about the opportunity despite, again, a large wad of money.  The treatment of Sven (who is suddenly a media darling - strange how things work out) shows that the Thais have little idea about perspective and realistic expectations.  Is Peter Reid still out of work?