This isn’t an article we really thought we’d end up writing, but it appears that Newcastle United’s supposed attempts to get Max Allegri are taken relatively seriously in Italy.
That’s no disrespect to the Premier League side, but when your current manager is Steve Bruce (again, we mean nothing mean by it) and you’re languishing in 13th in the table, trying to swap him for someone with the Italian’s past record isn’t a conventional move.
However, the times they are a changin’ on Tyneside, and with the sale of Newcastle to a new consortium with Saudi backers, there might be a little bit more pull from the Magpies’ end than before.
That’s what the British tabloids have been trying to put across, especially with the story the aforementioned Allegri could be the man the new owners turn to to establish a new dominance in English football.
There’s little information in Italy to back any of this up for now, and yet they aren’t quite laughing at the idea either.
Sport Mediaset, for example, have a lengthy article where they explain the new situation at Newcastle to their readers, looking at how the Premier League side could imitate Paris Saint-Germain in their attempts to dominate for years to come.
They explain the two operations have a lot in common, and how ‘historical rivalry that divides Riyadh and Doha’ could now include football.
But the end goal for Paris Saint-Germain in all this is winning the Champions League, which they still haven’t managed to do, with Sport Mediaset suggesting their error was to ‘focus more on players than coaches’.
That’s why Newcastle’s apparent plan of hiring Allegri doesn’t sound so ridiculous to the Italian press, as they see it as a smarter way of doing what the French club did, with the Saudis learning the Qataris’ mistakes.
We just thought you’d want to know how this is all being received abroad, you know, because we’re nice like that.
