Briatore is fast becoming the Jesus Gil of english football. What a farce QPR are becoming.
Gil, flamboyant as he was fat,lived and worked in a brothel to pay his way through university, began his professional life winding back the clocks on second-hand cars, and got pardoned by General Franco after one construction project, undertaken without plans or an architect, collapsed in 1969, killing 58 people. Given a crocodile by Madrid zoo, he promised to chuck him in with his under performing players "to do them in" and celebrated the 1996 double by riding round Madrid on an elephant. His beloved horse Imperious would never have taken the weight.
Big, buxom and brash, Gil bought 141 players and got through 26 managers in 17 years. Ron Atkinson lasted 93 days and jokes that he probably deserved a testimonial. It was longer than most. Cesar Luis Menotti left with Atlético third, Javier Clemente with them second, Tomislav Ivic between the end of the league season and the final of the Copa del Rey. In 1993-94 alone Gil got through six coaches. The following year, Alfio Basile - one of four that season - got so sick of his president that, live on Spanish radio with Gil also in the studio, he screamed: "I've had enough. I **** on your contract!"
The P45 was in the post. So, too, was Raúl's: the Spain and Real Madrid captain was an Atlético player until the genius president decided there was no point in a youth team. It was always someone else's fault. Normally the coach paid the price but sometimes the players too were in the firing line. After one particularly dire performance in the Canary Islands, Gil told reporters that hopefully the plane would crash on the way back "and kill the ****** lot of them". Following another collapse he ranted: "I'm sick of these fortune-earning, so-called professionals - they don't deserve to live!"