Why Dad Why?

Watching the Spanish football on Sunday night Nathalie took one look at the sartorial elegance of the Sevilla coach and asked, "Why can't Premiership managers be more stylish?"

"Some of them are," I replied, "in fact I bet that it's a 50/50 split between stylish and scruffs."

"Prove it."

I like a challenge. "Well there's Ancelotti (above), Wenger, Benitez, Fergie, Roberto Martinez, Roy Hodgson, Avram Grant and Roberto Mancini for start."

"Which proves my point, they're foreign."

"Fergie isn't, nors Roy Hodgson."

"They practically are, one's from Scotland and the other's from some foreign country."

"Well Hodgson is actually English. Alex McLeish."

"Scottish."

"Phil Brown, he always wears a suit and Sam Allardyce, there you go that's 11, I win."

"And most of them aren't English, proves my point."

Well strictly speaking it didn't prove the point and in fact if you add in Brian Laws who always wears a suit and Harry Redknapp who does more often than not then the sartorially challenged: Moyes, Bruce, Zola, McCarthy, O'Neil, Coyle and Pulis are indeed in the minority. I suppose the common factors between the tracksuit brigade are that a) they are still all relatively young and b) apart from Martin O'Neil they've won bugger all between them. Age and trophies aren't the answer but I can't help thinking that wanting to separate the position of manager from that of trainer or player has something to do with it. The old fashioned English way of thinking that suit means respect doesn't generally wash anymore, although I get called 'Sir' if I'm wearing one in a shop where if I'm not I rarely get a second glance, but the notion that a suit does mean business clearly does.

The other thing that amuses me when looking at the bench during football coverage is the fact that the coaching staff, and those managers who still wear a trackie, have their initials on their shirts/tops. Now I can understand it in the case of Ray Wilkins because there's always the chance that JT's Mum might drop into the club and nick something, but why do they do it? They have a person who washes the kit so does it matter what top you wear? I'm not sure if it's a purely English thing, looking at the Barca bench on Saturday night, where all the staff except Pep looked like they'd won a trolley dash at JB Sports, none of them had their initials on their kit. You don't see foreign fans wearing replica shirts in such large numbers either away from the international matches.

I don't know the answer, in fact I don't know if there is an answer but these small cultural details do make for interesting viewing when the footie is dull.