Vieira isn’t ready to hang his boots up

Reports of Patrick Vieira’s retirement have been greatly exaggerated – according to the player himself. Injury plagued in recent years the Frenchman has not lost any appetite or love for the game and although the 34 year old has been following Paul Ince’s managerial career with interest, aware of how few black players make the transition, at the moment he has no plans to follow suit.

“I will try to take my coaching badges to keep my options open, but to be honest I just don’t see myself becoming a manager,” Vieira says, “That may change when I stop playing, but I don’t intend to do that for a while. My contract at City runs till June, but I will definitely be playing football next season, either here or somewhere else. I hope it is here, because I have been pleasantly surprised by Manchester. I didn’t know much about the place before I came but it is quite a pleasant city in which to live. I’m obviously hoping to get a few more games between now and the end of the season to show what I can do, but we will have to see what happens. I’m not frustrated or stressed about my situation here, I’m perfectly relaxed about it. I have had one or two injuries in the past couple of seasons but I am fit again now. I am not quite ready to give up playing yet. After this season I will still want to play somewhere.”

Vieira says he is not afraid of hard work, yet admits his reservations about management are based on the hours and total commitment the job involves. He has observed many top managers going about their business and is beginning to think it requires a special sort of drive and personality.

“There’s a lot of hard work behind the scenes, aspects of management that most people do not see. Being a manager is a really difficult position, more difficult than many people realise. Players start training at 11am, for instance, that’s the start of our working day, but the manager will have been at the training ground three or four hours by then. It has nothing to do with how successful you might have been as a player, and I don’t see myself going back at the hotel, preparing the games. It takes a lot of commitment that, today, I’m not ready to give. So for the moment, I have no interest, though as I say, once I stop playing I could change my mind about it.”

Vieira has special responsibility at the club for looking after Mario Balotelli, who has made more of an impression with his mouth and the injury table than his feet so far in Manchester. Naturally Vieira is protective of his young charge, and insists he is joking most of the time, though he does accept the wider point that it is getting harder and harder to manage financially secure young players.

“Mario is still a baby, it’s the first time he’s been away from home and he’s used to having his family around him. Generally speaking young players are not as patient as they used to be. They may be more talented but they want things more quickly, and that makes life hard for managers. In football you get what you deserve, look at Ryan Giggs, but it is important to realise you might not get it all at once. Mario has a lot of self-belief, as you can tell, but as a striker you need to have that.”

Does Vieira think The Rags can go the season undefeated?

“They seem to have momentum on their side. United are a good attacking side, they play good football, but in addition they are strong. They can win games when they are not playing well, and come back in games when they look like losing. I don’t know if they will do it, there is a long way to go, but they look as if they could do it. They have built up momentum and they keep winning. They seem to believe they can do it, even if they go a goal down they believe they can come back and score, and that’s what you need. That’s what we had at Arsenal that season. Plus, United have an advantage over all the other clubs. They are used to winning the title. They know what it takes, how to go about it. They have stability and they have experience. I won’t necessarily be sad if Arsenal’s achievement is matched. It was a good record to set, we can all be proud of it, but it is part of the game for achievements to be challenged. I thought it might stand for longer, but there is still a way for United to go. They haven’t done it yet.”