Chelsea’s new charmer is a real breath of fresh air
AS A MASS of photographers scrambled to get the perfect shot of Chelsea’s new manager, Andre Villas-Boas made the only slip of an otherwise flawless first performance in front of the English press.
With the flashbulbs popping around him, the Portuguese attempted to calm the masses by assuring them “we have time”.
At just 33 years of age, Villas-Boas has worked his way into an improbable position of extreme responsibility and privilege for one so young, but time, as he is acutely aware, is the one commodity his endless charm will not buy him at Stamford Bridge.
While it’s only silverware that will appease his new employer, the self-deprecating humour and politeness – he was at pains to address every member of the press by their first name – he displayed during an epic 75 minute address will win him an army of new friends.
Clearly this is no Mourinho when it comes to soundbites but the respect – a word he must have used at least a dozen times – he claimed to have for both those inside and outside of Stamford Bridge and a belief in footballers as “social role models” may see the animosity many neutrals feel towards a club driven my Roman Abramovich’s riches dissipate.
It’s success, not popularity, the Russian craves, however, and his latest hired gun may have to forgo the nice guy act to meet expectations.