Big Phil Going To London

Big Phil was handed the sideline seat as the new Chelsea coach today, with an announcement on the club’s website filled with pomp and circumstance – as you can see to the left. (There’s no link behind that either.)

Big Phil will be stepping down as the coach of Portugal, a position he’s held for 5 years, at the end of the tournament to take over a freaking dream job for a coach with a transfer kitty which could rival the GDP of a small nation, and a defensive line featuring some of his current hands (Carvalho, Ferreira and recent signee, Boswinga).

The search for the future Abramovich throwdown partner wasn’t exactly overly successful, as Roman was publicly turned down twice by two of the best tacticians Italy has to offer. First Carlo Ancelloti of Milan, European champion a couple times over (which was surely why he was one of the first candidates) vehemently denied his advances, and then Luciano Spalletti, Roma’s tactical mastermind, snubbed something close to four times his current pay to stay in the Eternal City. (ed note: God bless you, Spal.)

Luiz is a highly respected, World Cup winning coach with the temperament to deal with the biggest of big clubs, but his success has mostly come at international level, and he’s never coached a European club, much less a club with the profile and expectations of Chelsea. Of course, the Portuguese NT is no small potatoes, but as any coach will tell you: club and country are very different animals. Still, you’d be mad to think he’ll be anything but a success in London, and Joe Cole can no longer call himself the best Brazilian at Chelsea (all apologies to Juliano Belletti and Alex).