Scolari Offered England Job
World Cup-winning Brazilian Luiz Felipe Scolari has reportedly been offered the England job by the Football Association.
Scolari, who guided Brazil to World Cup glory in the Far East in 2002, is currently in charge of the Portuguese national side but is out of contract after this summer’s World Cup finals in Germany.
FA chief executive Brian Barwick and lawyer Simon Johnson are understood to have met the 57-year-old, who is known as “Big Phil”, after being granted permission by the their Portuguese counterparts.
While Scolari, whose case has been championed by Arsenal vice-chairman David Dein, has previously revealed his interest in succeeding Sven-Goran Eriksson, he has insisted that he would not commit himself to another job until his current contract expires in July.
The FA board is due to meet again next Thursday, by which time Soho Square officials had hoped to be in a position to finalise their selection after a three-month search for Eriksson’s successor which has seen the likes of British candidates Steve McClaren, Martin O’Neill, Sam Allardyce and Alan Curbishley all be interviewed.
While League Managers’ Association chief executive John Barnwell feels the appointment of another foreign coach as England boss would prove “de-motivational” to the country’s aspiring club bosses, former England assistant coach Don Howe believes that the decision to appoint Scolari would have many positives.
Howe said: “I suppose I’m like a lot of people in the country in that we all thought this time we’d be getting a British England coach - Martin O’Neill, Sam Allardyce, Alan Curbishley, Steve McClaren, I think all of those could have done the job.
“I don’t know if Scolari is better but all you can do is go on reputation and he won the World Cup with Brazil, and if he’s good at handling experienced international players, with the big names they’ve got in Brazil, then so be it.
“I think why he was impressive with Brazil in the last World Cup was that he handled them well and he was tactically very clever. He could swap the team around during the 90 minutes of play.
“He was very good at seeing things going on out there on the pitch and he’d be on his feet and he would pull and push these great players around. So that was very impressive.
“They call him `Big Phil’ and he looked as though he could handle the style and the way Brazilians wanted to play and he could get success the Brazilian way.
“You would expect him to know the English way, because he has great experience, but it’s still a question of does he know the English way, does he know the way we are?”
And former England captain Alan Mullery added: “It’s an awful mess. If they had gone for Scolari in the first place then it wouldn’t have been this mess.
“They could have kept it quiet and could have said, ‘We’ll announce it after the World Cup’. That would have given us some idea it was somebody in a very good job, which he (Scolari) is.
“Portugal will now be very unhappy this has been announced in the press before the World Cup. It’s not a very diplomatic situation.”
