What a surprise, I knew we were going away but he’s booked us into a meeting and a tour of a new potential club. I couldn’t wait; all I could think about was who it could have been? So I decided to do some research. I couldn’t find anything; there was nothing on the internet, nothing in the papers, and nothing about recent sackings. I was baffled to which club I was going to see.

“Last call for all passengers flying on flight ESYLIS097 to Lisboa, please can all passengers proceed to gate 4”

This was our flight, my first chance to impress as a manager awaited me. As our flight left London Luton I was nervous, I’ve never been a good flyer. All I could think about was my future, this happened to take my mind off of the height I was traveling. As a football manager I never usually read the papers but as I was traveling to a new country and I wanted to get a grip of the press. I was shocked to find out that Paulo Bento had been sacked as Sporting manager. He failed to win the Bwin Liga last year. He was all over the sports pages. Headlines read ‘Estádio José Alvalade in upheaval’ as I read further into the article it came to my knowledge that the reason for the termination of his contract was because of his personal relationship with club secretary. There were two full pages with articles on the relationship between the two, but the thing that most caught my eye was the article on who were favorites to replace him. The hot favorite was Sven Goran-Eriksson, and then next came Ruud Gullit and then Michael Laudrup. All three have vast amounts of managerial and playing experience. After putting down the paper, all I could hear was my agent, Paul Warnock tackling an Easy Burger, Sesame seeds and orange wrapping all over lap. By the time he had munched away all his Easy Burger we were almost ready to land.

Paul and I had landed around half an hour ago and we were now at our hotel, just outside of Lisbon. I had to share a room with him but we had no time to settle in we had to be somewhere at 15:00pm. Paul wouldn’t tell me where we were going but I had a hunch we were going to the meeting and tour of the club. Twenty minutes later we arrived at Estádio José Alvalade, the home of Sporting Clube de Portugal. We stepped out the taxi, I couldn’t hide my excitement. Dressed in a new black suit and white shirt, I strolled to the main entrance. A beautiful young lady greeted me at reception, now I can see why Paulo Bento couldn’t help himself. Paul said to her “Good afternoon, im here with Tom Varney to see Chairman Filipe Soares Franco ”this stunningly attractive lady replied in a sexy Portuguese accent “One moment sir, I will go and get him”

A few minutes later a tall man came walking from the long hallway, “Why hello sir! You must be Mr. Varney” I replied “Yes, yes sir I am, thank you for welcoming me to your country I have been very impressed with it since I arrived this morning.” He shook my hand fiercely, my young fingers crippled in his old matured hands. I felt like such a weakling, what a bad first impression.

We then went on to have a tour of the Estádio José Alvalade Stadium; I was very impressed inside a modern, slick, work environment, and on the outside a 50,440 all-seater stadium with build in under-floor heating system in place. The attached training ground had good facilities accompanied by youth academy. None of the players were around so they had no idea that I was here, I felt a warm feeling about this place, even tho im confident in my own ability to do the job I had two problems. One, I couldn’t speak Portuguese and two, my attraction the receptionist. The fact I couldn’t speak Portuguese could be over come by lessons and at first a translator. My agent Paul could speak a little Spanish and was fluent in French so there was a start. Secondly, my attraction for said receptionist could be overlooked but if she came into play her contract would have to be terminated.

After the tour I sat down with Paulo, he said he had connections with FIFA, and that they had been impressed with my Pro License exams. He had been informed that I had achieved one of the best grades there. He went on to say that offering me the job would a massive risk for him, especially as he has managers such as Sven Goran-Eriksson and Ruud Gullit interested in the job. My stomach was churning, I had butterflies. “But if you want the job, be here at 9:00am tomorrow morning and it’s yours. I will arrange a press conference” Paulo finished. We shook hands again; thank goodness that it was a better handshake than our first one. Me and Paul left Estádio José Alvaladeand went back to are hotel.

After dinner at our hotel, I wanted to get an early night so I went back to our room. Paul said that he wanted to check out the local sights so he could give me a better tour of the local sights tomorrow. As I came out of the hotels restaurant there was press everywhere, I thought Sven or Ruud must have been here as well but I was wrong all the reporters were here for me. They were shouting all kinds of things at me. I couldn’t understand a lot of the things they were saying. They could have been shouting “Your mum’s a slu*” or even “Varney for president” but all I wanted to do was ignore them, I knew if I had responded with I want the Sporting job Paulo would have been in rage. So as they were rushing towards me pointed microphones and good know what I ducked and dived up the stairs to my room. That night I couldn’t sleep, all I could think about was my new job, I had so many big plans for this club, I wanted to get them to be one of the biggest clubs in European football.

The Chairman stood up from the desks and announces “Ladies and Gentleman, I here by announce to you the new manager of Sporting Clube de Portugal, Tom Varney” Gasps filled the room, most reporters had their cameras ready to photo Mr. Eriksson or Mr. Gullit, but they had to make do with me, a relatively unknown face in football. I walked into the room stood next to Filipe and shook his hand, I had been practicing my hand shake and I was please in the way we shook hands. The shake lasted for around five seconds so the reporters could capture the Chairman’s new signing. I then posed with a Sporting Clube scarf lofted high above my shoulders. Filipe then went on to say how he had made a massive risk in appointing me manager but he wanted to make absolutely clear that I had the full backing of the board. I then had to answer a few questions.

Sat in my office for the first time; a lovely modern office, wireless internet connected to my Laptop. I had to get used to using my Microsoft Outlook if I wanted to gain news from around the world and contact various clubs about the availability of their players. I wanted to get on, my aims for today were to meet my backroom staff and players, I wanted to gain knowledge from my staff about each player. I needed to asses my players; decide who I wanted to keep, release, transfer-list or loan out.
After meeting with staff I decided that I wanted to keep all staff that I had on board, I offered Carlos Periera and new contract which he accepted straight away. Same wage but moving from goalkeeper coach to first team coach. I wanted to bring in an experienced goalkeeper for the new role. I also wanted to have a very wide range of scouts available to me. So I insisted in bring in six more scouts and one more goalkeeping coach. I offered contracts to seven or eight scouts, and only offered one deal to a new goalkeeping coach.

After meeting with my coaches and players, I decided I wanted to bring in Europe’s top young players to succeed under my management. Straight away I sent out some un-wanted and promising youngsters out to my feeder clubs, Vit.Setubal and E.Amadora, this would help players get regular team opportunities.

I ordered my new scouts to search around Europe looking for top European players with potential. I wanted them to report back with a database of players to look closer at, so when I have discussed my transfer budget I can look closer into improving my squad.

I wanted to get things going, I was eager to carry this club forward. I urged my scouts to do a quick detailed search of different nations. I wanted them to scout, England, Belgium, Denmark, France, Croatia, Poland and finally Greece. I wanted to bring together a European dream team. It seems now that most of the top Portuguese players aren’t playing in the Bwin Liga. You see Cristiano Ronaldo and Nani move from Sporting to play in the premiership with Man United and Maniche and Simao playing for Atletico Madrid in Spain. This doesn’t look good for Portuguese football, it shows that they are producing the quality but they can’t hold on to them. In future years I want to nurture our current youth academy to become top, top internationals.

Im getting used to my office now; im not taking wrong turns and im used to having my own sexy secretary now. She hasn’t become that much of a distraction as I once thought she might have. She has the best tea making skills ever. My first meeting with my new chairman, I was looking forward to it but still was nervous. I thought there’s not need to be nervous, after all he is my new boss. We talked about what he wanted me succeed and vice versa, we agreed on all fronts apart from one. The European stage, he wanted to succeed in qualifying for the main stage of the Euro Cup but I needed to be challenging for a Semi final if not final place. He was surprised by my optimism but I explained to him that the players and I have already hit it off in training and in some of the recent team get togethers. We then went on to talk about future budgets, he explained to me that he had recently injected 4,000,000 Euros into the club and went on to say that our new sponsor Novarits.ch has matched his injection so I had 7,000,000 Euros to spend. I explained to Filipe that I was appreciative of this much at my disposal that he wouldn’t be disappointed at the end of the season.

7th July 2006

A week had passed, my scouts were ordered to return today. I had meetings planned with them this morning I have been elated with the information that they had gathered. I knew my budget now and I had a rough idea of what I need to do with my squad. I knew I needed at least five to six more players and I knew I needed to bring in quality in depth. So I settled down to all my information, videos, reports and interviews. I had made a shortlist of players that i had my eye on, there wasnt many class players available on the transfer list but my scouts gathered some good infomation on people i could get on loan.

A few days had gone by and eleven players had left the club, to join my feeders clubs. I had bids accepted, rejected and negotiated right, left and center but I managed to secure one of England’s top youngsters on loan, Victor Anicebe. he has come in on loan for the rest of the season. I had bids accepted for Danish goalie Kasper Schemichel, Saint-Etienne Midfielder Fredy Guarin, Kevin Miralles of Lille and Rene Mihelic of Maribor. I decided to let my Assistant Manager take care of pre-season matches. I wanted to take a back seat to initially asses my squad further.