Top La Liga boss combines childlike artistic talent with vision of a lunatic

After Barcelona’s 1-1 draw at the weekend against local irritants Espanyol, the daily Sport newspaper came across some very interesting sketches, containing Barcelona manager Frank Rijkaard’s scribblings as to how to win the derby.

One document (pictured) seemed to involve Barcelona defending a corner by herding the entire Espanyol side over to the touchline while Yaya Toure ran in from the corner flag to chase the ball out of his six yard area. “Gudjonshen”, presumably less than delighted to discover his boss only had the most passing familiarity with the correct spelling of his name, would meanwhile run unmarked in a little dotted line across the D.

Disappointingly, this tactical hallucination failed to materialise during the game, although whether it was due to Barcelona’s poor herding technique or Espanyol’s turning a deaf ear to the Catalan translations of “come by” and “good bitch” is not clear. Either way, the dark art of management has acquired a fresh cloak of mystery with the discovery of the “the Rijkaard configuration”. Perhaps those gigantic managerial salaries are no coincidence after all.