Best dressed manager in England? No contest.
Paul Tisdale is probably famed more for his dress sense than his activity in the dugout and it’s not difficult to see why with the silk scarves and fedoras that he brings to grounds across League Two.
Tisdale’s Exeter City side plays host to Liverpool in the FA Cup third round on Friday night and we’re backing him to go viral once more for his flashy choice of clothes.
In honour of Exeter’s biggest game of the season, it’s worth taking a look at the book Living on the Volcano in which Tisdale explains that his sartorial decisions give him an edge before a ball is kicked on the pitch.
“I’m an oddity,” Tisdale said. “With what I wear, how I speak, with the choices I’ve made. I’m an oddity in how I view my players. I really don’t mind the perception. It actually gives me an edge.
“I see it as a positive. There’s nothing clever or tactical about it, but the game is so conditioned to distrust individuality it allows me to show how strong-willed I am in what I do.
“How do you make players feel they can beat anybody? That’s why I wore a cravat for six months.
“I said to the players, ‘When I’m stood there, looking down the touchline twenty yards away, and the other manager’s got his tracksuit tucked into his socks, I’m one-nil up. How are you going to be one-nil up before you start?
“‘How are you going to be feeling in that crappy tunnel? Well, the other team will be p***ed off coming out of their dressing room, because it is damp and tiny.
“‘They might be four inches taller than you, but you’ll stand alongside them and know the manager’s got his cravat on. I’ll go out early and be stood in that technical area, with my silk scarf, feeling the b******s.
“‘When you walk out, you’ll look at me, and know if I feel it, then you’ll feel the nuts too’.”
Get this man a job in the Premier League!
