26th January – Footballing Birthdays
Fenerbahce manager Jose Mourinho is 62 today. The Portuguese won the Champions League with Porto in 2004 before joining Chelsea shortly after.
Mourinho has managed in five different countries and has managed Chelsea twice and had spells at Manchester United and Tottenham Hotspur. He has won 25 major honours as a manager.
Celtic manager Brendan Rodgers celebrates his 52nd birthday today. Rodgers is now in his second spell as manager at Celtic with a four-year-spell at Leicester City in between.
The Northern Irishman started his managerial career at Watford, before moving to Reading and Swansea City where he won promotion to the Premier League via the Play-Offs in 2011.
He then made a big move to Liverpool in 2012 where narrowly missed out on winning the Premier League in the 2013/14 season. A year later, Rodgers was sacked and joined Celtic in May 2016.
Rodgers has won three Scottish Premier League titles, three Scottish FA Cups and four Scottish League Cups. Two of these were domestic trebles where Celtic won all three competitions in the same season.
He also won the FA Cup with Leicester City in 2021 and followed this up with the Community Shield.
Former Southampton manager Ian Branfoot is 78 today. As a player, Branfoot played for Sheffield Wednesday, Doncaster Rovers and Lincoln City before beginning his managerial career with Reading in 1984.
He guided Reading to two promotions in three seasons and won the Full Members Cup at Wembley. Two years after leaving Reading, Branfoot joined Southampton where he spent three years in charge at The Dell. His final job in football management was at Fulham where he spent two years between 1994 and 1996.
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