Scolari gets to grips with new life in charge of FC Bunyodkor

But so what if, until very recently, Scolari possibly thought that Surkhandarya Province was a spare goalkeeper on loan at Portsmouth? Here is what he had to say on his appointment: “I know that I am in the right place at the right time and in the right team.” Good for him. And he’s not wrong, you know. Wikipedia informs us that Tashkent, the capital of Uzbekistan, boasts the only Metro system in central Asia. That’s just a fact.

Mind you, Wikipedia also informs us that “Isfandior Khudaykulov has agreed to play naked for Bunyodkor for a total of 16 months on a fixed salary of 14 goats p/a”. And that, somehow, seems unlikely to be a fact. Sometimes — sad though it is to admit it — Wikipedia lets you down.

But we could argue all day about whether or not this was an appointment befitting a former coach of Brazil and be nowhere nearer to a satisfactory conclusion. The point is, it’s work — official, paid, managerial work. And for former Chelsea managers, that’s quite a big deal.

Look back over the campaigns of the past 15 years and you will see how the battlefield is strewn with people who have had a go at managing Chelsea, with more or less success. And, eerily, what nearly all of them have in common is that they are unemployed at present.

(As managers, we mean.) The thread linking Glenn Hoddle, Ruud Gullit, Gianluca Vialli, Claudio Ranieri and Avram Grant is that all of them are in a position to watch more than the average amount of daytime television.

Hoddle went on to manage England and, after that appointment went pear-shaped, weaved a downward spiral through Southampton, Tottenham Hotspur and Wolverhampton Wanderers. Aged only 51, he has not found work as a manager since 2006. Gullit advanced from Chelsea to Newcastle United, where he was eventually about as welcome as a dose of swine flu. Since then the former World Player of the Year has lasted a year at Feyenoord and had a “spell” at the Los Angeles Galaxy, which is like football, but not really. And even then, he didn’t survive long.

Vialli? His next stop was Watford, where his managerial train seems to have terminated. That was seven years ago. Grant? Not a sniff since the 2008 Champions League final. You can see why Guus Hiddink, the most recent incumbent at Chelsea, chose to keep it short by prior arrangement and kept another job going, like a taxi outside with its engine running.

True, Ranieri has had three coaching roles since Chelsea struck him off — at Valencia, Parma and, most recently, Juventus. But even he was sacked a couple of weeks ago. It seems that only Jos? Mourinho, the Serie A-winning coach of Inter Milan, has seen Chelsea and lived.

Carlo Ancelotti, the latest appointment at Stamford Bridge, must have been looking at this history and experiencing enormous trepidation about his own future. But this week’s news about Big Phil’s big job will have settled the Italian’s nerves a little.

The work, clearly, is still out there — just not necessarily where you might have been expecting it. The Hindu Kush looks nice, for instance. At any rate, don’t knock it until you’ve tried it.

Anyway, let’s not be totally gloomy about the prospects, even in the absence of the big managerial positions. Gullit and Hoddle still get a lot of television work. It’s not as if having managed Chelsea makes you completely unemployable. Just mostly unemployable.

Australia’s exit offers reason to ask, ‘Whose line is it anyway?’

Writing in these pages, the great Shane Warne wondered whether Australia’s early exit from the World Twenty20 was “a blessing in disguise”. The deep public humiliation that took place at Trent Bridge this week, he suggested, could quicken Australia’s resolve for the Ashes.

This reading of the event took hold quite broadly. Within hours, doom-mongers were envisaging a vengeance-driven and manically focused Australia crushing England to powder in the Test series. It was alleged that, far from chortling and watching the really funny bits again on YouTube, England’s players ought to be getting ready to “rue the moment” a shame-faced Mitchell Johnson bowled the wide that gave Sri Lanka victory.

Are we really going to stand by and let this kind of carpet-sweeping prevail? It’s all very well to speak of Australia “drawing a line” under this demoralising Twenty20 outcome, but who said the line was theirs to draw? Surely the whole point of embarrassments such as these is that they leave everyone else holding the pencils and deciding what to draw with them, and when to draw it.

As such, we wouldn’t be doing our duty if we didn’t take the time to relish the defeat, to ensure that it isn’t swiftly cast aside and forgotten, or remodelled as something else.

We need to call it exactly as it was — an abject, pitiful, wince-inducing indignity. It was nothing “in disguise”. It was naked, in fact. Or if it was wearing anything, it was a poorly fitting clown’s outfit.

Are we saying those pictures of Ricky Ponting looking beseechingly skywards as it dawned on him exactly how bad Australia are at the moment were mere flickers in the great rolling-news light show? We need to allow them their proper moment, don’t we? We need to give those resonant images breathing space — time to foment.

This was not, then, in any sense, a mishap that can be cast aside amid talk of “kicking on”. It was an unignorable descent into comedy from which it will be a very long climb back. Let’s get that straight.

Wild cards make SW19 home of sport’s first postcode lottery

Latest Wimbledon wild cards. The All England Club is pleased to offer the following non-qualifiers a place in the main draw for the forthcoming Championships.

Robbie Chancer

Hard-hitting 24-year-old hopeful from Witney in Oxfordshire who, as recently as 2002, reached the second round of the Binky Fairweather Memorial Cup in Plymouth, defeating Emilio Cervantes, of Chile (0-2, Cervantes retired injured). A beneficiary of the LTA’s “fast track” tennis graduation scheme, Robbie has spent most of the year so far in bed, asleep, but is looking forward to “coming alive” on the fabled Wimbledon grass.

Amanda Lumsgrove

Nineteen-year-old Amanda arrives at the Championships fresh from an encouraging showing in the McVitie’s Krackawheat Paddle-Ball Open in Margate (lost, R1, to Ova Ovranova, of Slovakia, 6-1, 6-0).

The former Under-10 county judo champion ranks Wimbledon her “favourite tournament in the world” and doesn’t expect to have any trouble moving up to the bigger rackets.

Eric Le Pain

Inimitable French veteran, legendary round Wimbledon way for a piece of funny business in 1974 with a pigeon and, later in the same match, a policeman’s hat. Will always find a welcome in these parts.