Manchester United fans can knock the name of Marcello Lippi, the current Juventus coach, off their list of possible successors to Alex Ferguson, and that is official. Lippi, winner of three Italian titles and the Champions League with Juventus in the 1990s, has featured on the list of pretenders to Ferguson's daunting throne.
Talking to The Irish Times in Turin last weekend Lippi ruled out coaching at United or elsewhere in England, saying: "I have often talked with Alex (Ferguson) about the idea of coaching in England and I've also talked to Gerard Houllier about it too. But I have a problem. It's not that I wouldn't like to work in English football, it's just that I don't speak English.
"I know you can learn but my belief is that a coach cannot speak to 30 players via an interpreter. I don't see how you communicate everything you feel and think if you have to do it via an interpreter.
"My fear is that in order to learn the language at all adequately, you would need some months and in those initial months, it would be very difficult to work. Anyway, I hope very much to be staying for a few years yet at Juventus. It would be nice to pull off another five-year cycle (he was coach between 1994 and '99) but to do that, you've got to win first."
With that in mind, he has his sights firmly set on Bundesliga leaders, Bayer Leverkusen, against whom Juventus play a Champions League, second-phase tie at the Stadio Delle Alpi in Turin tomorrow night, a tie that was "fogged off" last week.
"This is a very tough group, perhaps only the Roma-Liverpool-Barcelona group is tougher. But we have the current Bundesliga leader, the leader of the Spanish championship and Arsenal, one of the strongest sides in the English Premiership. It is a very tough group but I believe that Juventus, the real Juventus, is capable of competing with any side," he says.
Beaten 1-0 by Lazio in Rome on Saturday night, Juventus have hardly had the ideal warm-up. Lippi claims to be unworried by that setback which, he claims, was due to a lack of match-winning temperament. He claims to be well satisfied with his new-look, post-Zidane side: "Ah Zidane. Zidane is a great player and a great guy. He's the one who wanted to leave and we had to accept that, reluctantly.
"I'm pretty pleased with how things have gone. We're not that far off the top in Serie A, we're into the second phase of the Champions League. We still have a number of things to put right, certain players still have not really settled in (i.e. Nedved), others like Davids are on the way back."
In this his second coming at Juventus, does he have a preference between the Italian championship and the Champions League?
"I've learned the best way to ensure you win something is to try to win everything possible. If you start to give the players the sensation perhaps it would suit you better to win the Champions League and not Serie A, then you're making a big mistake because, mentally, you don't have the right attitude going into some games. My belief is that you have got to try to win everything, even friendlies, everything."
Starting as of tomorrow night.
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