Great players do not always make successful managers. Will the Liverpool legend be a Zinedine Zidane or a Gary Neville?
When Ross Wilkins stood up during his late father’s memorial service at St Luke’s Church in Chelsea last week to address a congregation that included many of the great names of the past 40 years of English football, he found the words to express a poignant truth. “Football found a way to live without Dad,” he said, “but the simple truth was that Dad could never live without football.”
After calling time on his long and distinguished playing career, Ray Wilkins stayed in the game, as so many do. The next 20 years were spent in a variety of dugouts, as the manager of Queens Park Rangers, Fulham and the national team of Jordan, as well as assistant manager of Chelsea, Watford, Millwall, Aston Villa and England’s Under-21s. None of those appointments, it could be said, ended well.
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