Given his total absence of experience in managing in England – or indeed any of European football’s top leagues – Vitor Pereira is considered by many a strange choice when it comes to being considered for the Everton manager role.
But it’s not the first time a left field candidate has coveted the Blues top job.
Back in 1997 when Peter Johnson told Evertonians that they’d be “pleasantly surprised” by the calibre of bosses wanting to take charge at Goodison Park, former Dutch international Wim van Hanegem proclaimed his interest having last taken charge of Saudi club Al-Hilal.
That was the summer when Johnson was led on a wild goose chase for Bobby Robson before throwing his lot with a rookie in the shape of Andy Gray only to be snubbed by the Scot who chose to pen a lucrative new punditry deal with Sky Sports instead, and forcing a sheepish chairman to invite Howard Kendall for a third stint instead with both men knowing he’d been previously overlooked for one of his own former players who possessed no managerial experience.
Van Hanegem for his part would end up in Alkmaar with AZ before having further spells in his homeland at Sparta Rotterdam and Utrecht.
Over two decades earlier, another exotic name had thrown his hat into the ring at Everton with what was an unlikely “come and get me” plea.
The bizarre incident is recorded in Gavin Buckland’s new book, Boys from the Blue Stuff: Everton’s Rise to 1980s Glory.
In January 1977, the Blues were looking for a replacement for Billy Bingham who had been sacked by John Moores.
Gordon Lee would end up taking the reins but once again, Robson, back then in charge of Ipswich Town, was in the mix and on this occasion actually got as far as agreeing to join Everton and shaking hands with Moores on a deal.
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However, after the two parties agreed that nothing would be announced until Ipswich’s chairman John Cobbold had been informed, Robson called off the agreement and ripped up the £50,000 cheque Moores had given him for a ‘golden hello’ (seven times his current salary) because the Daily Express leaked the story.
Robson would later recall in his autobiography Farewell but not Goodbye: “Losing the chance to manage Everton, at that point in my career, was one of the regrets of my life.”
He would however, immediately sign a new 10-year contract at Portman Road where he doubled his wages.
However, just hours before Robson had travelled north to meet Goodison officials, another high-profile figure was declaring his interest in the job.
The interested party was none other than Italy national team coach Enzo Bearzot who would go on to achieve legendary status in his homeland after steering them to victory in the 1982 World Cup finals.
Such glory was another five-and-a-half years away at this point and just a couple of years into his post, it seemed as though the 49-year-old Beazot was getting itchy feet.
The Daily Express, the same newspaper that would produce the infamous headline: “Robson goes to Everton” only for it to scupper the move because the would-be boss (like Harry Catterick and Kendall, a native of County Durham) felt he could not trust his potential employers due to the ‘leak’, carried the following quotes from Bearzot: “I am definitely most interested. The job with Everton has prestige.
“I have been involved with international football for the last seven or eight years and am completely in touch with ideas and trends throughout European soccer…not least in England.
“I must wait to hear if Everton are interested before making a move of course, I am still officially under contract with the Italian Federation, and I would want to follow the correct procedure with our chairman Dr. Carraro.”
Paddy Agnew, Italy Correspondent for World Soccer, admits that Bearzot’s attributed interest in the Everton job is intriguing.
He told the ECHO: “Bearzot was considered a football ‘god’ in Italy.
“This link came before his World Cup success but I imagine someone must have spotted him and thought ‘well this guy works for the Italian national team, he must have a few ideas’ but it’s curious that he was interested in the idea as well.
“I remember seeing him once in a hotel in Milan where there were lots of representatives of all the Serie A clubs and some of his players from the 1982 World Cup squad were around him.
“There was huge affection for Bearzot and Gabriele Oriali said to him, ‘We’ll always be grateful to you, you changed all of our lives, you were fantastic.'
“Bearzot told them, ‘Look lads, I didn’t change anything. You won the World Cup, not me.’
“Despite him saying that, he really was a great football man and such a good coach.
“He played a classic Italian defence-oriented game and they did it very well but he added a few flashes.”
A year after Bearzot’s death in 2010, an award for the best Italian coach of the year was named in his honour.
Recipients have included future Everton manager Carlo Ancelotti in 2014 after steering Real Madrid to ‘La Decima’ (a 10th European Cup win) and Claudio Ranieri in 2016 for guiding Leicester City to their shock Premier League title success.
The 2020 edition was not held due to the coronavirus pandemic in Italy and instead the award was posthumously given to Paolo Rossi, despite him not being a coach, who had died in December that year.
Agnew believes that Bearzot’s faith in Rossi ahead of the 1982 World Cup finals were he won the Golden Boot, proved an inspired decision.
He said: “Bearzot could tell a good player and he saw Paolo Rossi at a very young age.
“He also took the ridiculous gamble of putting him into his 1982 World Cup team even though he’d only made three appearances the previous season after coming back from a match-fixing scandal and essentially hadn’t played for two years.
“That decision was made because he’d had Rossi in the squad in 1978 and seen how good he was.”
What’s also curious about the Bearzot link is that unlike his aforementioned compatriot Ancelotti who arrived at Everton almost 43 years later with a glittering CV having lifted trophies in all five of Europe’s ‘big five’ leagues, including a domestic double with Chelsea from his first season in England, the Italy World Cup winner possessed less experience at club level than current Three Lions boss Gareth Southgate.
Before joining the Italian FA in 1969 and working his way up to the top job in 1974, after a five-year stint with the national Under-23s side, Bearzot spent just a single season in charge of Tuscan Serie C side Prato.
Author Buckland himself points out that Bearzot’s aspirations of managing Everton could also have been thwarted by red tape.
He said: “There was a residential qualification of two years before foreigners could either play or manage in this country.
“This was only lifted the following year in 1978 and that's why Ossie Ardiles came to Tottenham. However, there were exceptions mind.”
Could Bearzot have proven an exotic and unlikely visionary at Everton almost two decades before Arsene Wenger’s ‘French Revolution'?
Or would he have proven a fish out of water in Merseyside despite his obvious coaching talents?
Might his arrival have ensured Kendall never got the chance to return to his beloved Blues and lead them to glory in the following decades?
Like so many turning points in Everton’s history, it remains one of the great football ‘what ifs?’
- Boys from the Blue Stuff: Everton’s Rise to 1980s Glory is out now, published by deCoubertin Books.
