SOCCER ANGLES:Luiz Felipe Scolari has been given the arduous task of making Chelsea lovable giants, writes Michael Walker
CHELSEA OWE English football. That's owe, not own, though you may feel otherwise at times. You may feel that something akin to wanton violence with a cheque book has occurred at Stamford Bridge these past five years, and that no matter what happens there Chelsea will never have the integrity of honest labour. They have bought the present and the future, but they will never be loved.
This is a tenable and understandable position. Chelsea's power derives from one man, Roman Abramovich, whereas Manchester United's, for example, stems from their broad, deep fan base and history. It's the same with Liverpool and all the biggest clubs in Britain. Tottenham Hotspur have a huge following, far more than fills White Hart Lane, it's just the club has not been run very well for quite some time.
Neither have Chelsea. Losses have run into scores of millions since Abramovich bought out Ken Bates. But they have their own rulebook at Stamford Bridge and there remains enough of a sense of fair play, even in a cynical trade, for that to rile almost everyone outside Chelsea FC. The modern Chelsea construct is false.
Therefore seeing them winning Premier League titles and Cups has displeased much of the population. To see them doing so in economic fashion, as they did so often under Jose Mourinho, was even worse. What's the point? It's not an unreasonable question.
But we may have reached a fork in Chelsea's beautifully-paved road. Deducing anything after one game is not sustainable, but something happened at Stamford Bridge last Sunday that brought pause for thought.
It is hard to ignore that sentiment from those neutrals who were at Chelsea for Felipe Scolari's first match in charge. Walloping Portsmouth is not the formality it might have been, and maybe there was something in that alone. But it was the nuance and ambition of Chelsea's play that seemed to flick on a switch in people's opinion-forming: maybe Chelsea have rediscovered that good football is as important as winning football.
Due to the hostility mentioned above, it is not a smooth transition in perspective. But in removing Mourinho last September, four months after that dreadful FA Cup final at Wembley against United - and the day after just 24,000 saw Chelsea fail to beat Rosenborg - Abramovich made a decision apparently based on aesthetics. The Russian billionaire wants art and joy to feature in victory.
He then made a strange appointment in Avram Grant, but that felt like an interim measure all along, regardless of Moscow and the European Cup final.
So, as of last Sunday, Scolari became the man, a creative director as much as a manager. Can he bring style to Chelsea, can he make them, if not loved, then at least admired?
Scolari has made a useful start. Even before a ball was kicked, he seemed different from his most famed predecessor.
On a personal level, there is some humility. "I am not Jose Mourinho, so why compare me with him?" was one of Scolari's first statements.
"Mourinho says: 'I will win 10 championships.' I don't say: 'I will win 10.' I say: 'I will try.' I am from south Brazil. We're different. I'll say: 'We will try to win all the competitions,' but in my culture, I'll never say: 'I will win this, this or that.' I'm more modest. Maybe Mourinho says: 'I win,' and afterwards if he does not win, it causes problems.
"Because the manager doesn't play; it's the players."
Those last thoughts are significant. They skip from the mouths of most managers, but Scolari's reputation centres on his relationship with his various squads, be it Brazil's or Portugal's. Funnily enough, like some ham Eastender, it's all about family.
But that does not make Scolari unique - Mourinho was always on about the closeness of his squad. It is a question of how that translates onto the pitch, and we will see more evidence at Wigan tomorrow. Will Chelsea try to win 1-0, or will they expand their personality? If it is the former, then Scolari's aim of making "Chelsea loved around the world like Barcelona and Manchester United" will sound meagre. Observers will note afresh that his 2002 Brazil World Cup winners could be routine despite Ronaldo and Ronaldinho, while sceptics in Portugal, of whom there are a few, will recall again that Scolari's side lost twice to Greece in hosting a winnable Euro 2004. They then lost to as average a Germany team as anyone can remember in the first knock-out match of these last Euro finals.
The ifs are plentiful. But it is if Scolari gets Chelsea winning with entertainment that a question will arrive for all non-believers: will you be able then to find merit in Chelsea?
