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KEY POINTS:
My favourite headline of all time hails from Fleet Street and the News Of The World some time in the 1970s - "Man found wife in bed with Chinese hypnotist from co-op bacon factory."
Lovely stuff. It was a multi-deck headline, four maybe five decks, which re-wrote the
rule book for headings in an era when "Man Bites Dog" was about as flowery as it got.
I was reminded of this headline when I read the ones, almost as unbelievable, that said Big Phil - Luiz Felipe Scolari - was sacked from Chelsea Football Club last week. His crime: coming fourth.
The Scolari headlines were almost as compelling as the NOTW one. The latter made me want to read on - why on earth did a co-op bacon factory need a hypnotist?
And why has Big Phil got it where the chicken got the axe? Because Chelsea is not really a football club; it's a rich man's toy. Russian billionaire Roman Abramovich has now surpassed himself with his efforts to buy a Premiership and a Champions League or, more correctly, to buy a dynasty which outshines and outlasts the likes of Manchester United and Liverpool.
Dynasties are made, not bought, and the scalp of Scolari - a World Cup winner and a man more steeped in football than Abramovich and his roubles will ever be - now hangs next to those of Claudio Ranieri, Jose Mourinho (who won the coveted Premiership twice only to fall foul of the Czar's manipulation) and Avram Grant.
But let's go back to our NOTW headline. What it referred to was a man of Chinese extraction who did indeed work for a bacon co-op factory but who dabbled in a spot of hypnotherapy. Our man hired the
co-op chap to help with problems in their marriage. Driven by curiosity one day, he peeped through the keyhole or some such and found the bacon man in a position with his wife that was more porno than hypno and applying therapy of an altogether different nature.
Which is essentially what Abramovich has done to Scolari.
Seven months after Big Phil took the job, he's out. Since Scolari's departure, well-respected Chelsea captain John Terry has made it clear that he and a few other senior players had backed Scolari but others hadn't. There were tales of players complaining to the Czar that Scolari had lost the dressing room.
Players who, like many of the Chelsea squad, appear more and more to be yesterday's men. When in receipt of enormous salaries such as Abramovich pays, human nature is to hang on to what you've got. If the finger of blame was shifting towards the players, they managed to deflect it back towards the manager.
All right, Scolari might have lost the dressing room but it was a political ploy by players who should have been spending more time on the game plan than the political plan. Chelsea's 'silvertail' squad hasn't been doing the business lately, even before the recent embarrassment at the hands of Hull. They have looked old, slow, with little conviction or intent - like men on a sinecure.
So Scolari is gone, with a trademark shrug. He trousered what is thought to be 7.5 million euros (about $20 million) in the severance deal and had admitted that he was in it, at least partly, for the money.
He knew after Mourinho's departure that the owner would interfere and make life intolerable.
Abramovich's purchase of striker Andrei Shevchenko was a disaster. It robbed Mourinho of his power and started the decline of Didier Drogba - pretty much the best forward in the Premiership at that stage but shunted out of his most effective position to make way for the owner's pet. Drogba was one of those said to be putting the boot into Scolari.
Mourinho was the man who could have given the Czar the kingdom he sought. So was Scolari. But he only got seven months.
What would have happened if Sir Alex Ferguson had been given only seven months at the helm of Manchester United? Or Bob Paisley at Liverpool? Matt Busby? Brian Clough? Arsene Wenger at Arsenal?
It doesn't bear thinking about. Those are football clubs, not the shiny bauble of a bored but bombastic billionaire who cannot yet understand why he can't buy a Champions League.
Real football clubs build their traditions and success with the vision of a good manager, old-fashioned hard graft and man management - not a rush of roubles. Chelsea's next manager, whoever it is, will enter the revolving door, knowing he begins day one with the razor poised over his Adam's apple and that, should cut come to slash (as it inevitably does at Chelsea), he will be wealthy indeed.
This isn't a football club, just a turnstile. Abramovich should coach the side himself.
It's what he does anyway.
* * *
While we are on the subject of Fleet Street, Chris Baldock, Sunday News editor and former Streeter, burst into livid print last week over the temerity of our columnist, Peter Williams, in questioning the David Tua-Shane Cameron fight.
In typical tabloid fashion, Baldock spluttered with rage and attacked Williams while totally avoiding one of our Pete's main points - that Fairfax's newspapers, principally his, were doing a wonderful cheerleading job for the promoter of the fight while not examining the fact that 50,000 Sky subscribers would have to pay up to make this thing float.
In space probably best used for printing something of interest to readers, he couldn't resist having a pop at the Herald on Sunday (though he didn't even have the courage to name us), saying we had been "so far behind" in covering this massive event that our sports team looked like Frank Bruno after a beating by Mike Tyson.
Interesting metaphor. Mike Tyson - convicted rapist, disgraced ear-biting boxer, a bankrupt who didn't manage to hang on to the US$300 million he amassed during his career, a fighter who was so badly mauled by Lennox Lewis he may as well have reached into his shorts and handed over his cojones there and then.
What an apt simile for the Sunday News.
You got a soft scoop, Chris - wow - but leave off the paper-bashing. It's like being beaten with a soggy ant and your protests only make the original contention seem even more correct.
And you sound remarkably like Tyson - the improbable and diminishing squeaks of a once-proud fighter who is very obviously coming second these days.
Or, in terms of the Sunday newspaper market, third.
