Scolari is back

The new coach to substitute Mano Menezes at the helm of the Brazilian national soccer team in time for FIFA 2014 is...Luiz Felipe Scolari, who led the "escrete" to his country's fifth world championship in 2002, before taking Portugal to the final of UEFA 2004 and the semi-final of FIFA 2006.

Scolari also took Portugal to the UEFA quarter-finals in 2008 before joining Chelsea FC where he was yet another victim of boot-room intrigue. Despite his short tenure at Chelsea FC, Luiz Felipe Scolari's career is studded with success. Quite apart from being World Champion, after a reasonable career as a player, Scolari has won practically everything there is to win.

In 1987 he took Grémio to the third-time Gaucho Championship in Brazil, he won the Brazilian Cup with Criciúma, he won the America Liberators' Cup with Grémio in 1995, he won the Brazilian Championship in 1996, he won another Brazilian Cup in 1998 with Palmeiras and the Liberators' Cup once more in 1999.

After taking Brazil to its fifth World Cup victory in Korea/Japan in 2002, he took Portugal to heights it had never reached, namely the final of the UEFA Euro Championship in 2004 (in Portugal) and to the semi-finals of the 1996 FIFA World Cup in Germany.

The appointment of Scolari will be made tomorrow (Thursday) by the Brazilian Football Confederation, CBF. Scolari's first objective will be to win the FIFA Confederations Cup (June 2013). Brazil won the last two editions of this Cup in Germany in 2005 and four years later, in South Africa.

The Confederations Cup consists of a competition among the winners of the FIFA regions, the winner of the FIFA World Cup, the host of the next World Cup and the winner or runner-up of the UEFA Championship, if the winner is the same as the World Cup (in this case, Spain).

Brazil enters as the host, together with Spain (World Champion), Japan (AFC Asian Cup), Mexico (CONCACAF), Uruguay (Copa America), Tahiti (OFC - Oceania), Italy (UEFA runner-up) and the winner of the 2013 African Cup of Nations.

The second objective will be to win the 2014 World Cup for the sixth time for Brazil, in Brazil. Felipão (Big Phil) will take over on February 6, against England, at Wembley Stadium in London and will have 20 games in charge of the Brazilian national team until the World Cup campaign gets under way in 2014.

Timothy Bancroft-Hinchey

Pravda.Ru