How Roma ruin led to Roman axe

THE MOMENT that the doubts first set in on the great Brazilian adventure, the first seeds sown that maybe all was not going to be sunshine and samba, was a on dismal evening in Rome last November.

FOUND WANTING Scolari cut an increasingly bewidered and frustrated figure FOUND WANTING: Scolari cut an increasingly bewidered and frustrated figure

Chelsea were ripped apart 3-1 in the Olympic Stadium by an average Roma team – and went down without a whimper, without a fight.

Worse, there came the first clues that Luiz Felipe Scolari, brought in with such fanfare the previous June, did not know what to do about it. All the flowing football of his first two months in charge had fooled everyone. There was no Plan B.

Skipper John Terry tore into his team during a massive dressing room row, accusing them of “not showing the fight we have shown for the last four years”.

GET ALL THE LATEST PREMIERSHIP NEWS NOW

Eight days earlier, Chelsea had surrendered the four and a half year, 86-game unbeaten home record they had so proudly built up under Jose Mourinho and Avram Grant, when Liverpool arrived at Stamford Bridge and calmly dismantled Scolari’s smooth attacking football.

One slip can be forgiven, a bad patch overcome. But sadly for 60-year-old Scolari, whose managerial cv reads so impressively, it was in fact the beginning of the end. Termination arrived at 3pm yesterday at Chelsea’s Surrey training ground, when he was sacked by owner Roman Abramovich, right-hand man and director Eugene Tennenbaum and chairman Bruce Buck.

It was a bitter blow for a man only just over a quarter of the way through a two-year contract worth £12 million and brought in specifically by Abramovich to put a smile back in Chelsea’s football after the sterility of the years under Mourinho and Grant.

The trouble was, those two got results. Back-to-back titles and cups under Mourinho, a Champions League final and runners-up spot in the league under Grant.

But when the players were booed off after last weekend’s grim, soulless, goalless draw with Hull which left Chelsea fourth, seven points behind leaders Manchester United, Abramovich’s patience had run out.

Chelsea had won just four of their last dozen league games and there was the real danger they might miss out on a top-four place, with Arsenal and Everton breathing down their necks – and the Champions League, the Holy Grail for Abramovich. So the axe fell.

There was a suggestion player power saw the end of the man who won the World Cup with Brazil in 2002 – but it was not as simple as that. In fact several senior players were distraught at Scolari’s abrupt exit.

Some blamed Abramovich – increasingly absent from Stamford Bridge as he battled to save his empire from the worldwide credit crunch – for not backing his man with the cash that he handed out so readily to previous managers.

But that is definitely not the case with all the players. There were several big dressing-room rows, most notably after a home defeat by Arsenal on November 30.

Players felt discipline and organisation on the training ground was not good enough.

To be fair to Scolari, he was starved of funds by Abramovich. Mourinho spent about £100m in his three and a half years in charge, and Grant £18m in six months, but Scolari spent just £8m, the week after he arrived, on bringing Deco to the club.

His only other signings have been free agent Mineiro, and, last week, Portugal winger Ricardo Quaresma on loan from Inter Milan until the end of the season.

Now a strong hand must be recruited. Two names in the frame to land the job are Milan’s Carlo Ancelotti and Abramovich’s old retainer Guus Hiddink who, until recently, was subsidised as Russia manager by the Chelsea owner.

For, as results over the last two months slumped, Scolari looked a bewildered figure, shouting and waving his arms on the touchline, shrugging his shoulders in despair when it went wrong.

Tactically he was found wanting. Unable or unwilling to divert from his favoured 4-3-3 formation, he quickly and perhaps erroneously decided Didier Drogba and Nicolas Anelka could not play together in attack.

Drogba being in a season-long sulk did not help and Anelka unhappy and unsuited to playing up front on his own.

Several other players, including Michael Ballack and Florent Malouda, have clearly lost interest in playing for the club, and some, such as the previously untouchable keeper Petr Cech, lost form.

Scolari said he always tried to create a “family” with his squads, whether at club level or internationally with Brazil and Portugal and to become a father figure if needed. But at Chelsea he became more of a grandfather – liked well enough, but never allowed to make big decisions.

In the end, good old Big Phil simply found that warmth was not enough. Not when the chill winds blow in from Siberia.

Would you like to receive news notifications from Daily Express?