Conundrum facing Champions League clubs: Look for next Pep Guardiola or next Arsene Wenger?

Neville’s debut at Valencia is a Champions League game but the rookie coach is not short on precedent, writes Ian Hawkey.

If Valencia qualify under new coach Gary Neville, he will be the only Englishman left in the last-16 stage of the Champions League. Jose Jordan / AFP

A rare apparition in the modern Champions League on Wednesday night. A Englishman will be in a technical area, as coach of a team in the competition.

Gary Neville's debut as a manager at senior level, with Valencia, thrusts him straight into club football's most elite environment. By the end of the evening, he may be part of something even rarer.

He could find himself the lone English manager in the last-16 stage of a competition which has just one English club left in it.

That is an unlikely scenario, though the final match day of the group phase, spread over tonight’s matches and another eight fixtures tomorrow, is heavy with tantalising possibilities, among them risks faced by three of the clubs from the richest domestic league in the world.

Arsenal, Manchester United and Chelsea, of the Premier League, all have work to do not to finish up relegated to the Europa League.

The struggles of English clubs in Europe’s higher echelons have been a theme of the past three years, a topic for the articulate Neville to analyse every so often in what has been one of his main pursuits, that of an analyst and pundit, since he retired from playing in 2011.

What neither he nor anybody else has been able to say of the Premier League’s curious mix of high entertainment and relatively low impact in the European Cup is that failings abroad are usually down to managerial inexperience.

The high-salaried men charged with guiding Arsenal, United and Chelsea through their potentially tricky 90 minutes, chasing the prestige and income that comes with reaching the knockout phase, have between them overseen almost 300 matches in the Champions League.

There is Arsene Wenger, whose Arsenal must win by a two-goal margin unless they can score at least three times at Olympiakos if they are not to put a dent in Wenger’s distinguished record of having accumulated a large number of his 173 Champions League nights as coach in the latter stages of the competition.

There is Louis van Gaal, a Champions League winner more than 20 years ago, with Ajax, who needs to lead United to victory against Wolfsburg to guarantee a place in the next phase.

Jose Mourinho, twice a European champion, must fortify a Chelsea who lost at home to Bournemouth at the weekend and are deep in the lower half of the Premier League.

Should they lose to Porto, they risk elimination.

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The beneficiaries of a slip-up by either of these seasoned Champions League campaigners? Mostly, young, fresh-faced coaches, accumulating the sort of pedigree Neville, 40, hopes he can gather in the six months his unexpected deal with Valencia runs for.

Sergei Rebrov, in charge of Dynamo Kiev since the middle of 2014, is a 41-year-old Ukrainian in his first club job. He is hopeful that with the right results his club could overtake Mourinho’s Chelsea in Group G.

Meanwhile, the man pitting his wits against the vastly experienced Wenger is Marco Silva, a 38-year-old Portuguese who made a reputation quickly enough last season with Sporting, in Lisbon, that the Greek club invited him to try his hand at his first foreign assignment amid all the noisy pressures of Athens.

If United stumble, it is PSV Eindhoven who are poised to take advantage. Their coach, Phillip Cocu, 45, is in his first senior job as a coach, having led PSV to the Dutch title in his debut season, 2014/15, in charge.

Neville knows his novice status in management makes his appointment at a Spanish club seem a daring one.

“We’ve all seen inexperienced coaches succeed, and experienced ones fail,” he offered by way of an alibi at his unveiling as Valencia coach last week.

His luck is that, beyond his obvious qualities of leadership, communication skills and elite-level playing experience, he has reached the stage of his career where coaching is a principle ambition at a time when young managers are in fashion.

He can ease into the slipstream of several achievers who have jumped swiftly from beginners to world-beaters.

Barcelona have set modern standards in this.

“You haven’t got the guts to do it, have you?,” Pep Guardiola challenged the then Barcelona president, Joan Laporta, in 2008 when interviewed for the job as coach there.

Laporta did have the courage to appoint a young, bold man, a former Barca captain, to his first senior managerial job.

Guardiola promptly led the club, at the age of 38, to the Champions League, Primera Liga and the Copa del Rey in his first season, and added another European Cup before his 41st birthday.

The formula would be copied.

Luis Enrique, the current Barcelona coach, oversaw his first Champions League match from a dugout in September 2014, age 44, and had guided Barca to the title at the end of that campaign.

Neville, who won two European Cups as a United player, will hope his first outing as a Champions League coach, indeed as a senior coach in any competition, is auspicious, too.

A win would galvanise Valencia supporters sceptical of a novice, and an outsider, taking over.

It would not guarantee progress, though, because Valencia need Ghent to drop points against top-of-the-group Zenit Saint Petersburg if they are to leapfrog the Belgian club into second spot in Group H.

So Neville needs a favour from Zenit’s coach, a man who has set several records for prodigious progress in the profession.

He is Andre Villas-Boas. AVB, as he is known, is still only 38, has the only 100 per cent record of any coach in this year’s group phase.

In his startling career, five different clubs have already had the guts to appoint him as their youthful, main man.

THE BIG MEN

Arsene Wenger

The 66-year-old Frenchman, in his 20th year at Arsenal, goes into his 174th Uefa Champions League fixture needing a win, by a clear margin or with at least three goals, at Olympiakos to maintain a record of reaching the second phase every year since 2000.

Louis van Gaal

The 64-year-old Dutchman will reach the landmark of his 100th Champions League fixture if Manchester United make the semi-finals. But to guarantee getting out of even the group stage they must beat Wolfsburg tonight.

Mircea Lucescu

The 70-year-old Romanian has accumulated over a century of Champions League matches, excluding qualifiers, as a coach. But his Shakhtar Donetsk are aiming for no more than a Europa League place in the final match day.

YOUNG BLOOD

Andre Villas-Boas

AVB, just 38, won the Europa League at the end of his first full season as a coach, with Porto. Short stints with Chelsea and Tottenham Hotspur followed, and the displays of Zenit Saint Petersburg in Europe this season have repolished his reputation.

Marco Silva

The latest from a line of young Portuguese coaches. At 38, he has the chance to guide Greek league leaders Olympiakos into the knockout phase at Arsenal’s expense. Joined in the summer following fine work at Sporting in Lisbon.

Gary Neville

The Englishman has a most unusual introduction to club management tomorrow, when he makes his debut as a senior coach, in the Champions League, in a country, Spain, where he has never worked.

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