ABSTRACT
This essay analyzes the central role that football managers play in contemporary football fiction. As a middle man between directors, players, and fans, the manager serves as a projection screen for supporters’ hopes and anxieties. For many fans, these sentiments center around the topics of social exclusion and alienation, since the large-scale renovations after the Taylor Report and its concomitant effects have changed the spaces of fandom for good. As most recent football fiction negotiates the drastic changes that have affected fan cultures since the 1990s, the fictional manager is often called upon as a defender of traditional values. Therefore, the prototype of an experienced veteran manager prevails in most examples, as the coach’s age can nostalgically stand in for a generation of values that is being driven away from modern football. The chapter discusses filmic examples by directors Michael Corrente and Steve Barron, and novels by David Peace and Philip Kerr. It comes to the conclusion that the fictional manager is often constructed as a symbol of resistance and as an ‘outlaw’ who shares with traditionalist fans the sense of being betrayed and left behind by a system that focuses on the market instead of the fan.
