After nine months of Avram Grant’s electrifying personality, ‘Big Phil’ Scolari should finally bring a bit of colour and excitement back to the Bridge. His CV is first-class, having won the World Cup and been a winner at every job he’s had. The only question mark is, he hasn’t yet managed a club in Europe, so that’ll be a new ball game for him and he’ll have to learn pretty fast. He’ll be pitting his wits against the best managers in the world, and I’m sure he’ll relish the challenge. It all looks good from the outside. He’s a lot of advantages, of course. He takes over a fantastic squad, and he’ll have a king’s ransom to buy players, so you don’t have to be Einstein to see why it’s a very attractive job. The only downside is, he’ll need to win trophies. Second place won’t do. Avram Grant finished second in almost every competition, and that wasn’t deemed good enough.

Big Phil got into a spot of bother a few years ago, when he said there was no way he would have a gay player on his team. He’s got a point. As a manager, you try to protect the group, and keep things harmonious. The fact is, many players would not like a gay player at the club. If you can imagine, players getting changed, taking baths and showers, knowing that a guy might fancy them – they’d feel uncomfortable. His comments might look outrageous from the outside, but most managers privately would say the exact same thing. The world has changed. I remember when I played, if a lad had dyed his hair blonde or had an earring, he would get wolf-whistles and all sorts of stick in the dressing room. Nowadays, you have David Beckham wearing his wife’s skirt in public. The world has moved on, but I still don’t think football has evolved to the point where you could have a gay player accepted in the dressing room.
Part of the reason Jose Mourinho left the Bridge was all the interference from above. Abramovich insisted on buying Shevchenko, which Mourinho wasn’t thrilled about, and there’s every chance Scolari will have to deal with the same sort of situations. There’s always pressure from upstairs at any big European club; as a manager, you just have to get on and deal with it. If your owner has put a large stake of money into the club, and he wants it run the way he wants, you have to abide by the rules. But the Real Madrid model shows what can go wrong when there’s no stability at a club, they keep chopping and changing and the manager gets changed every few months. That, for me, is the model of how not to run a football club, and it’s starting to happen in England, with Man City being the most obvious example.
They’re looking to get in Ronaldinho, which doesn’t strike me as a good move. He would be extremely expensive, and he’s not the player he was. You’d question his heart and desire, and I can’t imagine Mark Hughes tolerating a player who wasn’t committed to working his socks off and training hard. The problem with Ronaldinho is, he seems to enjoy things off the field far more than on it, for the last couple of years anyway. I think he’d be a very dangerous signing, a liability. It’s one of those that would get the fans excited at first, but after six months they’d be happy to pay his fare home to Brazil. If City want to become a top club, they need players who will work hard and close people down – every winning football team has always done that. Hughesy knows that, and he showed all the hallmarks of a great manager at Blackburn on a shoestring budget. He made great signings on the cheap - Benny McCarthy, Santa Cruz, David Bentley – and he’ll have a bigger budget now. I would hate to think that full control will be taken out of his hands by an over-ambitious, interfering chairman who starts telling him who to buy and sell. I hope he has total control over all football matters, and I’d like to think he made that clear before he took the job. The board have to trust him, and just back him with the finance he needs.
I note that Aiden McGeady has been linked with the Republic of Sunderland, and I’d see him as a worthwhile signing. They’d want to be careful about just signing Irish lads for the sake of it, though. Roy’s record so far is pretty good, but he hasn’t always made the right signings. He’s been accused of signing too many Irish lads and old team-mates. I think he likes to go for people he trusts and has already worked with; he knows most Irish lads are good workers and have the fighting spirit that they need to stay in the Premiership. In the long term, they’re going to need a good scouting network across Europe, which they don’t really have at the moment. I don’t think Roy’s inclined to trust foreign players unless he’s previously worked with them, and he’s maybe a bit afraid of going for unknown foreigners who might only be after the money and don’t have the desire and passion that you need. Eventually, he’ll have to establish the right recruitment network in foreign countries: all the top clubs have that.
One of the upsides of bringing in all these Irish lads is that, since Roy took over, they seem to have become one of the most popular clubs in Ireland. I was coming through Dublin airport one day when Sunderland were playing at home, and I couldn’t believe the amount of red and white shirts. The chairman’s Irish, the manager’s Irish, the sponsors are Irish, most of the players are Irish – it’s perfect from a marketing point of view. But that enthusiasm will only last for so long, and if they go down, it won’t last.
Finally, the Euros have been fantastic entertainment so far. You have a few really good, attack-minded teams who are brilliant to watch. Spain, Portugal and Holland have been all outstanding going forwards. Out of all the teams, I think Spain are that bit ahead of the pack; the partnership of Torres and Villa is awesome and will take some stopping. It’s been so much more enjoyable than four years ago, when you had Greece suffocating games and closing teams down, defending for their lives and managing to win the tournament. Now football has moved on and they’ve been broken down and found out, which has been pleasing. I’m all for attacking football. As far as players, I’ve been very impressed with the Russian full-back-cum-left-winger, Zhirkov. I’ve seen him before, and I’ve always liked him: pacey and dangerous. Some of the Portuguese lads have been great as well, especially Deco, and I think you might see one or two of them following Big Phil to the Bridge.