In England, he is called the team manager. In the rest of the world, he is the coach, sometimes 'head coach'.

Whatever the word, can Diego Maradona, phenomenon that he was, step over the line from artist to boss in Argentina?

Does Harry Redknapp, an average player turned into Harry Houdini for managing teams out of crises, have the magician's touch to lift Spurs out of the mire?

These, like every other coaching appointment, are gambles.

Team management is not a science. No two situations are the same. Redknapp inherits a squad of apparent misfits who live, train, and seemed to lose together every day of the week.

Maradona acquires a pool of fabulous footballers. But they are strangers for nine-tenths of their time, brought together from different football cultures in different lands.

'The Argentine national side is like a Rolls Royce covered in dirt,' said Maradona on Thursday. 'It needs to be cleaned.''

Cleaned, oiled and balanced and made to believe in the sum of its parts.

Maradona should know, if anyone would, that a coach is nothing without players. And players, without co-ordination, are worth little.

The six draws, one win and one defeat in matches that Argentina have just played is a massive underachievement.

Diego and Harry have to make good players play. To instil belief. To liberate Messi and Co for Argentina. To make new Spurs like Luka Modric perform in England's frantic league the way they have for Croatia.

Do coaches make a good team, or do good teams make a coach?

It is the chicken and egg conundrum.

'Managing change,' Sir Alex Ferguson reckons, is the art of management.

A coach cannot create out of stone. He can attend a thousand coaching courses, collect myriad coaching badges, but unless he can make talents and temperaments gel, he will fail.

'My first job,' Maradona said, 'will be watching the players. I'll try to talk to them one by one and work at the training camp in Ezeiza.'

He was stopped from flying to watch Carlos Tevez and Javier Mascherano in England this weekend because that impulse was too hasty.

His priority was to talk things through with Carlos Bilardo, his former mentor who will assist him, and then with Sergio Batista and Jose Luis Brown, teammates when they won the 1986 World Cup, and now part of his back-up team.

Similarly, Redknapp is not a man alone. He has begun recruiting former Spurs - Clive Allen, Tim Sherwood and goalkeeper coach Pat Jennings for starters.

Behind every modern coach stand aides who also must gel. They may work the good-cop, bad-cop routine of managers.

Redknapp's technique is simple: He tells every player how great they are, even when that is patent rubbish. He sends them out chin high and chests proud, like soldiers to the front.

Harry has three distinct advantages over the sacked Juande Ramos. He speaks the language, he knows the Premier League, and he makes sure he has no so-called technical director between himself and the chairman.

Maradona broadcast that Lionel Messi must learn to share his genius with the team, and will soon fly to Barcelona to reassure the forward how important he is to Argentina.

The fact that Maradona was the country's greatest will open the players' minds, but his words from here on will determine how far they go together. It is their era, not his.

History teaches us that playing talent does not necessarily translate into management.

Franz Beckenbauer did it, second time around. He lacked experience when he took over Germany as 'Team chef' in 1986.

'Fool that I was, I took care of every little thing, like dripping taps,' he recalled.

Four years later, when his Germany won the World Cup, he delegated responsibility to No.2 Bertie Vogts, trusted the captain Lothar Matthaus, and was grateful for the strong personality of Jurgen Klinsmann.

'It was child's play,' Beckenbauer insisted.

Such child's play that Beckenbauer is only the second man in history, after Brazil's Mario Zagallo, to win World Cups both as player and coach.

Passing on the knowledge is the hardest thing. Afredo di Stefano, Ferenc Puskas and Hugo Sanchez failed.

Klinsmann, Marco van Basten and Hristo Stoichkov attempted what Maradona is now attempting; all had no coaching badge; all had assistants who did the training and organisation.

The stand-out is Johan Cruyff. To my personal knowledge - we worked together on a project while he was a player - he was the closest thing on a field to being a player-coach in his heyday.

His brain thought the moves through for other players.

But as a coach?

It depends on who you ask. Stoichkov, the most volatile player in Cruyff's Barcelona team, summed up: 'Cruyff combined the qualities of the best coach in the world with the most stubborn character I ever worked with.'

When Stoichkov was hired and fired as Bulgaria's national coach, the star players said much the same of him.

stsports@sph.com.sg

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Four years later, his Germany won the World Cup... Such child's play that Beckenbauer is only the second man in history, after Brazil's Mario Zagallo, to win World Cups both as player and coach.