Molineux Mates Racking Up The Titles

Major honours continue to be scooped by former Wolves players who are now scattered round the globe in management.

Kevin Muscat has recently become a league champion in China for the second year running and Robbie Keane has an opportunity in the New Year to further showcase his talents in the dug-out.

The two were Wolves team-mates in the late 1990s and there is a third strand to this happy story, with Mike Stowell having been goalkeeper coach during the winning of league titles in both England and Israel in relatively recent seasons.

Muscat celebrated a league and cup double in his first season with Shanghai Port, who have just retained their league crown by a point from city rivals Shanghai Shenhua.

Keane again has Ferencvaros pushing strongly for the Hungarian title after leading them to the title last season and is enjoying a fine Europa League campaign with them as well.

The defending champions are a point behind leaders ETO Gyor at the 18-game mark after winning 1-0 at Diosgyori yesterday and are sixth in their giant European table with four wins and two draws from their six matches.

And the first month of 2026 might go some way to determining how successful Ferencvaros’s season is. They are at home to Gyor in the league in the last weekend of January – a huge game that falls in between European assignments at home to Panathinaikos on January 22 and at Nottingham Forest on January 29.

Keane’s men recently got the better of Rangers in Budapest and the trip to the East Midlands, media spotlight and all, might just place him more firmly on the radar of British owners and chief executives.

The Irish legend had one or two mentions for the Wolves job after Vitor Pereira was dismissed in early November and did not rule out the prospect of one day managing Celtic when questioned by Scottish journalists covering Rangers’ recent game in Hungary.

He is certainly building an impressive CV after also leading Maccabi Tel Aviv to league title glory in Israel two seasons ago, with Stowell in his backroom team.

Muscat also had a major shout-out back in the British Isles this autumn by being strongly linked with the Rangers post that became available after Russell Martin’s sacking.

He might well have been appointed had it not been for the end of the Chinese season being a few weeks away.

Will 2026 be the year he and Keane are given their first head coach jobs in these islands? Is it even possible that they might one day be on opposite sides in an Old Firm derby?

Stowell, now the golkeeper coach at Plymouth, kept a clean sheet on the day Keane made a sensational debut in senior football by scoring twice in a Wolves win at Norwich on the opening day of 1997-98.

He was summoned to work in Tel Aviv with the Dubliner nearly three years ago but Keane then had to set out in Budapest in 2024-25 with a keeper coach already in situ.