ThreeMatchBan
Every manager was a player once, or nearly. Long before the training-ground press conferences, the touchline gestures and the inevitable sacking, the 33 men below were footballers with a squad number, a sticker photo and a haircut chosen by somebody who would later regret it.
The quiz asks for the manager, not the player, but the clue is the old sticker. Some of them have barely changed in thirty years. Others are unrecognisable.
From the pitch to the dugout
The path from player to manager used to be almost automatic in British football. A long career, a captaincy and a respected voice in the dressing room were enough for a board to hand over the team, often while the player was still registered to play. The player-manager was a common sight in the lower divisions through the 1980s and 1990s, and a few even tried it at the top level.
Coaching badges changed that. The licences now demanded by UEFA mean a modern manager spends years studying before being trusted with a first team, and the route into the job has widened to include analysts, academy coaches and former players who never got beyond the reserves.
The best example remains Arrigo Sacchi, who built the great AC Milan side of the late 1980s without having played professionally. Asked about that, he is said to have replied that nobody needs to have been a horse to become a jockey. José Mourinho's playing career was similarly brief and modest. Neither would have been much use in a sticker quiz.
Great players, mixed managers
There is no rule that says a brilliant player makes a brilliant manager, and the history of the game is full of evidence. Some of the finest footballers of their generation lasted a season in the dugout and never went back. Some modest full-backs and squad midfielders became managers who won leagues and cups for decades.
The 33 in this quiz cover both camps. There are former internationals and title winners, and there are men whose playing careers were spent largely out of the spotlight before they found their real calling with a clipboard. Picking out the second group from their old stickers is the hardest part.
Moustaches help, sometimes. Hair hinders, nearly always.
The photographs themselves were taken on pre-season photo days, under flat studio lights, with players lined up in their new kit and told to look at the camera. Nobody posing for one of those pictures imagined it would resurface decades later as evidence. A young midfielder with a perm and a cotton collar gives very little away about the grey-haired figure who now prowls the technical area in a club coat.
The managerial merry-go-round
Managers rarely stay anywhere long now, and the Championship is the most restless division of all, as 20 changes of management in 10 chaotic months shows. The lighter side of the job is collected in five hardworking managers clowning around, and a sharper look at the trade comes in the questions over Roberto Martinez at Everton.
For more faces from old albums, try the stars of English football sticker quiz or the Brits abroad quiz, which includes a few managers who learned their trade overseas.
How to play
Type your answer in the box under each sticker. There is no sign-up and nothing to submit: when the name is right, the box turns green and the score counter at the top goes up.
Use full names, first name and surname, the way the club quizzes expect "Queens Park Rangers" rather than "QPR". Accents and double letters catch plenty of people out, so if a box stays white after a confident guess, the spelling deserves a second look before the memory gets the blame.
A tip from experience: start with the ones who still look the same, then come back for the moustaches.