In a surprising announcement, Guus Hiddink has said that he is extremely close to signing a deal to take over as coach of the Russian national team after he leads Australia into the World Cup in the summer.

Hiddink will also leave his day job as manager of PSV Eindhoven following the World Cup after leading them to their 19th Eredivisie title last week, their sixth under his control over two spells as manager. Having also led Holland to the World Cup semi-finals in France in 1998 and South Korea to a similar position in 2002, Hiddink was widely tipped to be a forerunner to replace Sven Goran Eriksson as England head coach but has surprised the footballing world by turning his sights east to the burgeoning football power of Russia.

Hiddink told Holland Sport that the deal he was negotiating would allow him to continue to live in Amsterdam and only travel to Russia for a few days or weeks at a time when necessary, a situation very popular in international management these days and also employed by California based Germany coach Jurgen Klinsmann.

With Hiddink now off the “potentials” list, English football fans can sense a growing feeling of unease over who will actually finish up wearing the blazer with the three lions on it once Sven is gone.

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 11th, 2006 at 8:43 am and is filed under International Football News. You can subscribe via RSS 2.0 feed to this post's comments. Both comments and pings are currently closed.