Man Utd manager target Max Allegri claims tactics are ‘bulls***’ and players are like horses

FORMER Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri has sensationally claimed that tactics are "bulls***".

The 52-year-old has regularly been linked with Premier League clubs over the last 18 months - particularly Manchester United and Arsenal.

And speaking to ESPN, the highly-rated coach expressed his opinions on top-level football management.

He said: "Federico Tesio, one of the greatest horse trainers ever, always used to say you need to go and see the horses in the morning and watch how they move their legs. It's the same thing with players.

"You go and see the players and you watch how they move their legs. That's how you find out whether they're in good shape or not. Then you go inside [the training facility], you get the stats and see if they confirm what you saw or not."

The six-time Serie A winner has bemoaned the modern over-reliance on technology - and believes that the best managers spot things themselves.

He said: "If I see a player has run not very far - let's say 3,000 metres [nearly two miles] - at a high heart rate, it means he isn't in a good way.

"If I don't watch the player and I only look at the numbers from his heart monitor, it looks as though the player has had a great session at high intensity.

"I always tell my assistants to look at how the players move their legs, not the computer. In my ignorance I don't even have a computer.

"I've got an iPad that Juventus gave me. I watch games on it, pull up some stats. Fortunately I've got a good memory and I manage to remember what happens in games."

On the suggestion that coaches may get a better view of what's happening in a game from the bird's-eye view of the stands, Allegri is unimpressed.

He added: "Mega bulls***, one of the biggest bulls*** I've ever heard.

"A coach has to be on the sideline. He has to breathe the game, he has to understand when it's time to make a sub or take off his best player because the team needs a different kind of player.

"How can you see that from the stands? I've had to do it a few times and you feel detached. You're disconnected.

"You don't hear the sounds of the pitch. You don't look the players in the face and you have to do that in order to decide whether it's time to take them off or say something to encourage or spur them on.

"If you're not there, how can you do that? All you can do from the stands is phone the bench and say, 'Take him off,' just like the fans do.

"The perception is different from the sideline. They're making out football to be an exact science. If that's the case, the coach may as well go to the cinema."

More of a romantic than a stereotypically Italian pragmatist, Allegri has described football as "art", and believes it is up to the players to take responsibility on the pitch.

He explained: "When the ball gets to your [Cristiano] Ronaldos, [Paulo] Dybalas, Ronaldinhos, [Clarence] Seedorfs or [Andrea] Pirlos... I have to put the other players in a position to get the ball to them, and once they have the ball they decide what to do with it, what the best decision is.

"My son is eight, and every now and then we go on YouTube and watch the great players, the amazing things they do in attack and in defence, because football is art.

"In Italy, the tactics, schemes, they're all bulls***. Football is art and the artists are the world-class players."

Amid recent speculation, with the Arsenal and Spurs jobs having been vacant in the last couple of months, Allegri recently confirmed that he IS learning English, ahead of his planned return to management next summer.

And he will surely be high up the list of potential contenders for any big job that happens to be vacant when he is ready to return.