Peter Mark Roget published the first thesaurus in 1852: in English, of course. Well, what other language would have had use for it? English has breadth and complexity unsurpassed, offering hundreds upon thousands of synonyms and affording its speakers an abundance of linguistic opportunity. The Oxford English Dictionary, last published in 1989, took 20 volumes to do its subject justice, with two additional volumes published at a later date. The initial publication ran to 21,730 pages, totaled 59 million words and 60,000 alone were used to define the 430 senses of the word “set”.

Not that the OED redundantly documents the obscure to achieve its impressive size and status; if it encapsulated every technical or scientific term in the English language, its pagination would more than double. As it is, there are 200,000 words in common use in English, twice that of French, which is probably why we are a nation of writers, not painters. And that luxurious language brings a proclivity for imagination. This is where the Chelsea manager, Luiz Felipe Scolari, or Big Phil as he is more widely known, comes in.
Scolari is one of football's most successful coaches, with a World Cup win at the helm of Brazil in 2002 and multiple titles as a club manager in South America. He popularized the über fashionable 4-2-3-1 system and is a clever exponent of a form of man-management that seeks to make an emotional connection with his players, often by using sports psychology and detailed psychological profiling. As opposed to his alter ego, Big Phil, who is a cartoon character, looks like Popeye Doyle and fights like Popeye the sailor man. Big Phil seeks to resolve every situation with a right-hander and, given our vivid imaginations, there is no surprise in guessing which version of this split personality we have taken to our hearts.
Sitting before the cameras and microphones at the Hilton Hotel in Cobham, Surrey, Tuesday, Scolari was charm personified. Those expecting a pugnacious bruiser would have been disappointed. Scolari greeted familiar faces from Portugal with first names and unnecessarily apologized for his English, which he politely endeavored to use at every opportunity.
If it ain't broke, what's to fix with our game? Quite where that leaves the perception of the man as a nightclub bouncer in a Chelsea tracksuit is a tough one, for just as Scolari's friend Fabio Capello became a caricature of a ruthless Mafia don on taking the job as manager of England, so Scolari is Big Phil, the belligerent enforcer that would be the muscle of his operation. It makes for great theatre, but it cannot be right. Nobody would get as far as Scolari has in the game if his only trick was putting the frighteners on anybody that stood against him; equally, Capello must have considerably more humanity than his flint-hearted image would suggest.
When Capello stood up at the lunch table on the day before England played France in Paris and starkly revealed that Rio Ferdinand would be captain, much to the anguish of John Terry, who had expected to return to the role he enjoyed under Steve McClaren, the former manager, this was widely interpreted as evidence of the new man's coldness and distance.
Subsequently, it emerged that he merely lacked the command of the language that would have been necessary to reassure Terry that his time would come - as it did against the United States at Wembley in May - so he stuck to the short sentences with which he felt comfortable. Capello is not the ice man. Had that been a decision taken at an Italian club, with Italian players, he would have given more detail about the process to each man. Not much, maybe, because he keeps his relationship with players brisk and businesslike, but enough that Terry would not feel that he was being punished.
It is the same with Scolari, who is considerably more sophisticated than his representation suggests. Part of his aura is that he does bear an uncanny resemblance to Gene Hackman, the actor - and when he is struggling with his English he has a vocal timbre not dissimilar to Latka Gravas, the mechanic played by Andy Kaufman in the situation comedy, Taxi, which is even more disconcerting - and this gives him a unique presence, which suits our inventive inclinations. Even Arsène Wenger, the Arsenal manager, found Scolari's features a problem at first. “You meet him and you think: 'Why is Gene Hackman talking to me about football?'” Wenger said.
Scolari is a religious man, who made a pilgrimage of thanks to the sanctuary of Our Lady of Caravaggio, the Virgin Mary, near his home in Caxias, in northern Brazil, after guiding his country to the World Cup in 2002. His mentor, Carlos Benvenuto Froner, a lower-division coach in Rio Grande do Sul, in southern Brazil, taught him to engage with his team at a level that transcends sport, an approach that must be intellectually rigorous. There are clear contradictions here between faith and science that make him an interesting character, yet until now we have preferred a third way, the legend of Big Phil, and have doctored the narrative accordingly.
For example, on June 12, the day after Scolari's appointment was announced, Simon Greenberg, Chelsea's director of communications, revealed the planned schedule for the week when the new manager would publicly assume control at Chelsea. The players would report back for training on July 7, he said, and Scolari wished to have the day free to work with them, so there would be a formal press conference on July 8; all very routine. Yet later that month, news of Chelsea's return to training on July 7 was revealed as if Big Phil was cracking the whip and getting the players back early (in fact, Chelsea are far from the first to return), because that is the persona that has been chosen for him. The hard man, the tough nut, the sergeant-major.
This was certainly his reputation in his early days in Brazil and it would have been instantly familiar to those who read the magazine World Soccer in the late 1990s, particularly the wonderfully entertaining dispatches from its Brazilian correspondent, Brian Homewood. Here, Scolari's nickname, Felipão, became the more evocative Big Phil (which is the equivalent of calling Ronaldinho “Little Ron”, something we should be well up for if he signs for Manchester City), an Anglicisation that, apparently, Scolari was unaware of until recently, but hates.
Brazilian club football is arguably the liveliest on any continent, a veritable rogues' gallery in which teams are always suing their way into, and out of, leagues. Any manager lasting more than six months is a veteran (for all his success, Scolari had 18 jobs in 21 years before becoming coach of Portugal) and the staggeringly gifted players are as likely to run along with the ball on their head as at their feet. Homewood reported all this with a cynic's eye and central to the enjoyment were tales of the most successful manager of his generation, Big Phil, winner of Copa Libertadores titles with Gremio and Palmeiras.
So when Palmeiras were to play Manchester United in the 1999 Intercontinental Cup in Tokyo, British football writers were already primed regarding the colorful identity of Sir Alex Ferguson's opponent. He was a Brazilian known dismissively as The Argentinean, because his countrymen felt that the uncompromising nature of his teams had more in common with the football played by their arch-rivals to the south.
He offered Vanderlei Luxemburgo, his main rival, outside for a fight during one match and threw spare balls on the pitch during play in another game as a time-wasting tactic because his team led. After a defeat, he told a press conference that his players needed to commit more fouls, and defended his statement by claiming that all managers said such things, but he was the only one honest enough to admit it. Big Phil versus the Human Hairdryer had a greater build-up than the Rumble in the Jungle.
In the end, it was rather anti-climactic. Manchester United won a forgettable game by a single Roy Keane goal and Scolari looked no more animated than many other managers on the touchline. Ferguson spoke highly of him (more so than he probably does now after several years of conflict over his Portugal players, and reports, which Scolari denies, that he advised Cristiano Ronaldo to quit for Real Madrid), and by the time Scolari arrived at the World Cup in 2002 with Brazil, it was clear much had changed since those early years.
The man that once pronounced the beautiful game dead breathed life into it by finding room in his team for the three Rs, Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, and they played some of the finest football of the tournament. At their best, his Portugal teams were a delight, too, and while there has been the odd skirmish - he was banned for four matches while coaching Portugal for attempting to punch Ivica Dragutinovic, although video evidence may suggest that the Serbia defender struck the first blow - increasingly the Big Phil reputation is outdated.
Everywhere but here, in fact, where it fitted his image perfectly that on his second day in charge he became central to the increasingly fractious negotiations between Frank Lampard and Chelsea. Yet Scolari was very much caught in the middle, a hapless mediator. He made nothing but positive comments about Lampard - he wanted him to stay, he could play with Deco, he would be vice-captain - but by last night, the club appeared to be on war footing again.
Contrary to the character styled for him, the manager called Scolari, who works so hard to create an atmosphere of unity within his squad, would have been appalled. Indeed, the most telling moment of his unveiling ceremony came when an English journalist, trying to be matey, cheerily referred to him as Felipão. “Are you Brazilian?” Scolari scolded. “Only Brazilians call me that.” He said it with a smile - he said most things with a smile - but there was something in his manner that ensured that it was Felipe from then on. If you want to see the dark side of Scolari, it seems, just ask for Big Phil.
(Source: The Times