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With all the noise swirling around Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal future, it’s inevitable that other managers would be linked to what is almost certainly one of the plum jobs in European football - running a London-based club on good financial footing who are routinely in the top four of one of the highest-profile leagues in the world.
And today, we hear one of those noises about a big name: Juventus coach Max Allegri.
Juventus manager Massimiliano Allegri has reportedly told friends he will take the Arsenal job this summer. [Calcio Mercato] #afc pic.twitter.com/F8kCmzdEDC
— afcstuff (@afcstuff) February 28, 2017
Yes, fans, you heard it there first - Allegri has said he’s going to manage Arsenal! Huzzah!
Except.
This is a prime example of a relatively respected journalist slipping into full-on ITK mode, as revealed by his “source”:
reports are circulating that the manager let this story slip at dinner with friends.
Really? “reports are circulating”? Sounds like you’re the one doing the circulating! There’s literally no other source discussing this - a quick Google shows that the other outlets picking up this story (the Sun, the Daily Star, something called Dream Team FC) pretty much took the story I linked above at face value and ran with it, which...nope.
The big question I have: If this is in fact true, and if in fact Allegri has a deal - even a word-of-mouth, not-signed-yet deal - in place, would that deal not have a confidentiality clause built into it? And why would Allegri take the risk of talking about a deal like that in public, knowing that all the people around and listening might not be willing to keep quiet and not tweet/FB/otherwise publicize what they hear?
It is not outside the realm of possibility that Massimiliano Allegri will become the next Arsenal manager. It is, however, a stretch to say that somebody random, who isn’t credited in the story, heard it in a restaurant from Allegri himself, and that we should all be assuming that it will happen because of that single incident of hearsay. There’s a long way to go before the end of Arsene’s contract, after all, and after 20 years of stability, we’ll have to get used to stories like this popping up more frequently now.