Pep Guardiola. Jose Mourinho. Antonio Conte. Jurgen Klopp. Between them, there are 17 league titles spread across England, Spain, Germany and Italy. Mourinho and Guardiola have also won the Champions League, club football’s Holy Grail, twice. Add in Arsene Wenger, who will complete 20 years at Arsenal in October, and Mauricio Pochettino, the 44-year-old who took Tottenham Hotspur to the brink of the title last season, and it’s not hard to see why England has become the battleground for the world’s leading football managers.

Ranieri will be watched
The joker in the pack is Claudio Ranieri, whose achievements with Leicester City last season deserve a chapter in Ripley’s Believe It or Not! Elsewhere in the English Premier League, Ronald Koeman has been tasked with bringing back the glory years to Everton, while Aitor Karanka has led Middlesbrough back to the Promised Land after seven seasons in the Championship. With the exception of Wenger, who is 66, Mourinho and Koeman, a youthful 53, none of these men is even 50. They can look forward to many more fruitful seasons.