Former Juventus coach Massimiliano Allegri has attempted to pour cold water on reports he could be in line to become Manchester United’s next manager.
With the Red Devils making their worst-ever start to a Premier League season, pressure is beginning to mount on Ole Gunnar Solskjaer with Allegri’s name quickly thrown into the frame as a possible replacement.
The Italian, who is currently without a job after leaving Juve, claims his English skills are not yet up to scratch for a job at Old Trafford.
“I don’t speak English enough yet, but I’m learning,” Allegri joked while speaking at the Football Coaches Association symposium via Przeglad Sportowy.
While eager to improve his English, Allegri went on to highlight that he is a coach that listens more than he speaks as he underlined how he was able to succeed at Juventus.
The 52-year-old won Serie A in each of his five seasons with the Bianconeri and twice saw them progress to the Champions League final.
“There are two ways to be a good trainer: authoritarian and liberal. I prefer the latter, so I listen more than I speak,” Allegri said.
“Thanks to this strategy, I receive more information from the outside that positively changes my world. I still deny the validity of my ideas. I argue with myself.
“If I think that something is 100 per cent good, I am worried and consult on this opinion with the people around me.
“When I came to Turin after Antonio Conte, many thought I was screwed. That Juve is burned out. That the winning stage is over because the team is saturated.
“The situation was not perfect because I found a team that needed rebuilding. It’s exciting, but also at risk of failure, and Juventus is not the place where the latter is accepted. That’s why I had to look for ways to stimulate the group. I listened and changed.”
Allegri also revealed his unique relationship with strikers Zlatan Ibrahimovic and Mario Mandzukic during his time coaching in Italy.
Former United striker Ibrahimovic has been linked with a return to Old Trafford while Mandzukic has emerged as a genuine transfer target for the Red Devils, with the club closing in on the signing of Croatian forward in a £9 million ($11m) deal in January.
While at AC Milan, Allegri claims he often had to calm Ibrahimovic down, and at Juve he felt he was able to give Mandzukic some much needed stability.
“In Milan, Ibrahimovic was still p*ssed off because others couldn’t keep up with his reasoning,” he said.
“Two years I explained to him that others do not play like him. He had to understand that. The coach should use the player as much as he can offer.
“That’s why Mandzukic is a special player for me. He gave me an amazing amount of room to manoeuvre. Great footballer. He often changed clubs, so he had a difficult patch.
“He stayed in one club for five years. This is one of my greatest successes.”
