Sexy Scolari And A Blueprint For England’s Future …
After interviews, a secret rendez-vous and disinformation, England has decided on its man and his name is Luiz Felipe Scolari.
Reports claim the FA selection committee has offered Scolari the job of England manager and all that remains to be agreed is the small print of the contract. Instant polls suggest the English football public broadly supports the offer. Some English managers, former players and influential pundits however, do not.
‘I think it would be a popular decision, but I don’t think in the long term it’s a good decision for what’s best for England and English football,’ said Howard Wilkinson, chairman of the League Managers’ Association.
Current Manchester City boss Stuart Pearce, also reproached the FA’s choice and voiced the disappointment likely to be felt by English contenders Steve McClaren, Alan Curbishley and Sam Allardyce.
‘I do recognise that there are Englishmen who feel they are experienced enough to do the job and I can understand they are frustrated if they haven’t got it.
‘I am surprised it’s not an Englishman because the groundswell of public opinion seemed to be pushing towards someone of that nature.’
The moans of Pearce and others are predictable and should be discounted because Scolari is unquestionably the right man at the right time. An appointment of this magnitude would be as sexy as it gets in English football. There is no need to rehearse Scolari’s qualities and experience. Winning the World Cup and getting to the final of the Euro 2004 are perfect rebuttals to the doubters.
It is to be hoped that Scolari accepts England’s call. The FA will face continued sniping and should expect to be baited by sections of the media punditocracy whenever England performances dip under Scolari’s watch. Wilkinson has already indicated an early line of attack.
‘I don’t have any reservations about him as a manager,’ Wilkinson said. ‘His track record with Brazil was good but name me a manager of Brazil whose record hasn’t been good in the last 50-odd years.’
Similarly damning with faint praise was Gary Lineker, a big gun of Little England’s heavy artillery. ‘He’s got great credentials by winning the World Cup but he did it with Brazil - my granny could probably have managed Brazil to World Cup success,’ said the former England hero turned BBC sports presenter, rolling back decades of progress and understanding of foreign nationals.
‘He clearly knows his stuff but it’s the difference culturally and the football between Brazil and England that worries me. I think it will take him three or four years just to work out the crazy game we play in this country.’
In making the offer, the FA has acted boldy and delivered a powerful signal to all concerned that excellence and experience are everything and not small details in the bigger picture of finding someone who looks good in a crested blazer, has a native accent, keeps his trousers on and proves easy to handle.
To its credit, the FA has faced down the vocal anti-foreigner lobby and given English football a real chance of success in future international tournaments.
A talented squad will leave these shores in the next few weeks with every reason to be confident of going through to the quarter finals of the World Cup at the very least. Most of the first eleven are young enough to play vital roles in the future. Scolari, a proven winner, is the best man available to develop them and take England further.
However, this is all wishful thinking if the FA does not go combine a Scolari appointment with a restructuring of the domestic game that might bring an end to 40 years of hurt.
Nothing rivals the Premiership as an entertainment spectacle. Twenty teams battle it out for nine months a year before huge crowds. Top strikers from around the world grace a game made all the more thrilling by woeful defending and the English custom of fierce commitment and a refusal to settle for a draw.
Yet the entertainment value on offer exhausts the game’s leading talents. Few would expect thoroughbred stallions to perform at their peak in races staged just three days apart over the major part of a year. Footballers get no such consideration and their fabulous salaries limit the sympathy fans might otherwise extend to them.
If the FA intends to pay Scholari five million pounds a year, then it should give him the means to succeed in the post. It makes no sense to change the man at the top whilst leaving everything else in place which might bring him down. The FA should take steps to reduce progressively the size of the Premiership from 20 to 16 teams. A slimmed down Premiership would allow for a winter break which would extend the freshness of players still further.
A gritty FA with the courage to turn a deaf ear to media critics could find the gumption to bring in such a change. A league where every team plays thirty eight matches a season is a cash bonanza to chairman and their well-paid club directors, irrespective of its effects on players and viewers. The FA will need to act with great cunning if it is to outwit opponents more formidable than even newspaper headline writers.
In offering the top job to Scolari, the FA also needs to establish firmly the supremacy of the national team. The domestic game should be geared towards producing players capable of their best form in summer tournaments. Such a move runs counter to the rumoured plans of the G14 collection of Europe’s biggest clubs, which views international football almost as an expensive nuisance to be subordinated to the demands of the major clubs.
If the FA was able to triumph over the greed of Premiership chairmen, a virtuous circle might be created. Success in major competitions would increase interest in the game at all levels and benefit players, clubs and fans alike.
Reducing the Premiership is not new. It was certainly an option when Sven-Goran Eriksson was appointed and should have been forced through. An opportunity was missed six years ago. For the sake of the national game and as a reward to a courageous FA, it should not be missed again. AU
