Chelsea name Scolari as new £6.25m pa manager
the independent
Chelsea have appointed Luiz Felipe Scolari as their new manager and will pay the Brazilian an astonishing £6.25m-a-season over the next three years in what is one of the biggest deals ever agreed in world football.
The announcement caused consternation in Portugal, where Scolari is the coach of the national team who yesterday beat the Czech Republic 3-1 in their quest to win the European Championships.
At first Scolari's advisers, wrong-footed by the suddenness of the announcement, denied that a deal had been struck with Chelsea. They even claimed he would renege on any offer if it was made public, as he once did when Benfica named him as their coach, but they were embarrassingly forced to back-track after the Premier League club made an unequivocal announcement on their web-site.
Even so Scolari has not yet signed a contract. His negotiations are being handled by the agent Jorge Mendes, who has developed into one of the most powerful men in football and who, ironically, also represents Jose Mourinho who was sacked by Chelsea last year. Mendes was still talking to Chelsea last night as to whether Scolari would sign a two or three-year deal but the likelihood was that he would agree the longer contract. What was certain, however, was that he will be the next Chelsea manager.
The Independent, which maintained that Scolari was always the frontrunner for the post, revealed on 29 May that he had been contacted by Chelsea and was the favourite to succeed Avram Grant who was sacked after an unhappy eight months in charge following Jose Mourinho's dismissal.
Indeed The Independent contacted Scolari the day after Grant was sacked to ask whether he would be interested in the Chelsea post. He said he would – but didn't want his interest to be made public. He also said he would be comfortable with the conditions set down by the club owner Roman Abramovich who has made clear that he wants a disciplinarian coach but also one who is willing to discuss team matters and selection with him.
Scolari was excited by the prospect of taking over but did not quite believe that Chelsea wanted him. No-one else was offered the job.
The deal to hire Scolari was struck in Geneva on Tuesday evening when Scolari met Frank Arnesen, Chelsea's head of youth development and chief scout, and the main power broker at the club, and Pier De Visser, the 73-year-old Dutchman who holds the unofficial title as Abramovich's scout.
Abramovich himself was in Geneva yesterday and had lunch with his advisers before travelling to watch the Portuguese play at the Stade de Geneve. The win means they qualify for the last eight of the competition and the impressive way they have performed so far has also helped Scolari's cause. Scolari will take over at Stamford Bridge as from 1 July with his contract with the Portuguese Football Federation set to expire –on 29 June – after this tournament finishes.
In a statement Chelsea said: "Felipe has great qualities. He is one of the world's top coaches with a record of success at country and club level. He gets the best out of a talented squad of players and his ambitions and expectations match ours. He was the outstanding choice. Out of respect for his current role and to ensure minimum disruption to this work there will be no further comment from Chelsea nor from Felipe about his new role until his employment with us commences."
Scolari, who won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002 before leading Portugal to the final of Euro 2004, was set to become England manager in 2006 but changed his mind at the last moment. The 59-year-old freely admits that part of his motivation for accepting Chelsea's offer is the contract he has been given.
Big Phil will leave no one in doubt who is in charge
There is one major point to be made in favour of Luiz Felipe Scolari as manager of Chelsea – as there was when he came into the running as England's coach at the fall of Sven Goran Eriksson.
It is that he is not for nothing known as Big Phil.
He is perhaps not the wisest or most self-controlled of football's top echelon coaches – as recently as last September he was eager to punch out a Serbian player after a fractious qualifying game – but the coach of Portugal, and World Cup winner with Brazil, has passed all the tests in the vital matter of controlling a team – and leaving nobody in no doubt who is in charge of all aspects of the operation of a team.
Chelsea owner Roman Abramovich and his chief gofer Peter Kenyon have made free with the pride and the dignity of all three managers in the era of the oligarch.
It was Kenyon, if you remember, who advised the first victim, Claudio Ranieri, that it wouldn't be enough to eventually shoulder the likes of Sir Alex Ferguson or Arsène Wenger out of pole position in the Premiership. His team also had to win by scores of 5-0, with at least one of the goals coming ideally, from a distance of around 30 yards.
Hugely entertaining, for anyone who has had any contact at all with Scolari, is a picture of Kenyon, perhaps wearing the medal he so proudly collected in the eyes of a vast audience last month in Moscow, offering the same working instructions to Scolari.
In the end even the Special One, Jose Mourinho, felt the stabbing knife of humiliation after annexing English football power in his first two years.
And what can we say of the regime of his successor Avram Grant? Only that it could not have been founded in less satisfactory circumstances – or less in sync with the classic running of a successful club. Grant was injected into Mourinho's regime in a way which would not have been countenanced by Ferguson or Wenger for more than the time it takes to say goodbye. When Grant emerged with the prize of Mourinho's office, and proceeded to chase Manchester United to the line in both the Premiership and Champions League, his rewarded was to treated with no more respect than an office boy, a retainer who was required to doff his cap not just to the man who paid his wages but, at times, it seemed, to both the players and the fans.
That kind of situation would be tolerated by Scolari for just as long as it took him to make new arrangements.
This might sound a somewhat peripheral to the effectiveness of Scolari as the new manager of Chelsea but, of course, it is utterly central to his prospects.
He has, you can be sure, made it clear that if he will manage the club in his own way, and with his own reputation in mind, rather than the whims of the executive office. This is how Ferguson started off at Old Trafford, and survived some lean days, and how Wenger has consistently made it clear is the only reason he stays at Arsenal in the face of a hundred options across the football world.
Scolari understands that the strong men win in football and he is perhaps entitled to believe that his credentials in that matter are beyond any critical examination. The most passionate and inflamed football nation in the world, his native Brazil, bayed for his head when he defied their yearnings for the return of the great hero Romario. Scolari said the folk hero simply didn't figure in his plans.
Among the threats and the burning effigies was the threat of a public lynching. Scolari shrugged his shoulders and said he would go his own way. The result was Brazil's first World Cup win in eight years. Whether he has the patience for the day to day operation of a major European Club nearly a decade after he walked away from the domestic Brazilian game is one legitimate question. But while we are finding out that answer, there will not be enquiries about his nerve or his pride. Maybe for the first time in time of Abramovich, Chelsea have a manager who truly walks the walk as well as talks the talk.
