Tim Vickery column

By Tim Vickery South American football reporter

Read my answers to this week's questions

Joel Santana has already seen that there is going to be a downside to being the new coach of South Africa.

Santana is quickly learning that he will have a tough time ahead

When the Brazilian was appointed to replace his compatriot Carlos Alberto Parreira, he seemed to think that Christmas - his birthday, by the way - had come early.

He was contemplating the money he would earn and the job security he would have.

But it comes at a price. "Mr Nobody," one of the South African papers dubbed him.

Being an unknown in his future environment (he leaves his current job with Flamengo next week) leaves him unprotected against the - at best - scepticism and at worst - outright contempt with which some will greet him in South Africa.

Being a coach can be a lonely job. I saw this clearly at the end of last year when a conference of Brazilian coaches was addressed by Roy Hodgson.

He gave an interesting lecture on the art of the club coach, but it was clear that years of coming under attack have left some scars.

Much of what he said dealt with the strain of facing criticism from those who might not be qualified to hold an opinion.

"They talk football for hours in the bars of Milan, or London, or Rio," he said. "But they don't say anything - they don't know anything." Us coaches hold all the secrets.

Joel Santana spoke soon afterwards, and struck a very different tone.

Whether Santana can supply charisma and leadership is an intriguing question

After a brief career as a centre-back he gave up to concentrate on coaching. While he was studying a phrase from one of his instructors stuck in his mind: "Football is a sport where you can learn even in a kick-about."

He told the story of the time that he travelled to an away game without knowing much about his opponents.

So he went off to a nearby petrol station, found that one of the attendants supported their local rivals, and received from his new friend a full and accurate report on the team he was about to face.

This little tale sheds a lot of light on Santana. Many contemporary Brazilian coaches are all sharp suits and high technology. Not him.

Santana is usually seen in scruffy jogging suits, and is always seen with his famous clipboard, where he notes down - with good old, fashioned pen and paper - the points he wants to make to his players.

His great strength is personal relationships.

He has the sensibility to establish a common wavelength with those around him, and the charisma to lead them in pursuit of the collective goal.

Or rather, he has these powers in Rio de Janeiro, his home city. Whether this can translate to his new surroundings is the most fascinating aspect of his appointment.

When he swapped Brazil for the Portuguese national team, Luiz Felipe Scolari did not have to change language. But he had to change a lot of other things.

Santana could do well to follow the example of Scolari (pictured)

He had always been a first class motivator, but he quickly found that the tub-thumping "God's on our side" rhetoric did not work with the Portuguese players.

Instead he discovered that he could get through to them better on an individual basis. He was sufficiently intelligent and flexible to adapt his methods.

Now a similar challenge faces Joel Santana.

He can count on a massive advantage - he is stepping into a well-defined collective structure.

For decades Brazilian football has featured what is known as a technical commission - a group of specialists working together.

The coach has the final say after input from all the others, the assistants, the goalkeeping coaches, the physical preparation team, the physiologists, psychologists, physiotherapists and so on.

This is the structure that Carlos Alberto Parreira implanted in the South African team following his appointment well over a year ago.

Together his team have observed hundreds of players as part of the process of whittling down to a squad of 30.

As a result of his wife's health problems, Parreira has been obliged to resign. But his structure still remains. The back up staff are still there. Only the head has changed.

So in comes Santana to supply charisma and leadership. Can he do so in a new continent, with a different culture, in a second language?

It already looks like one of the most intriguing questions of Africa's first World Cup.

You can put your questions to Tim Vickery every week on the World Football Phone-in on BBC Radio 5 Live's Up All Night programme from 0230 to 0400 BST every Saturday. You can also download last week's World Football Phone-in Podcast.

Up All Night website

World Football Podcast

YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED

Got a question about South American football for Tim Vickery? Email him at [e-mail]

I was reading a book about the early World Cups and it made me think how amazing it is that Uruguay, a country of about 3.5m people are still one of the most successful nations in its history, having won two World Cups as well as numerous Copa Americas. I know that the Uruguayan national team has fallen on hard times recently, not qualifying for three of the last four World Cups. I started wondering why this was - has Uruguay stopped producing as many good players as in their glory days or is it just that the bigger countries in South America like Colombia and Ecuador have started punching their weight in terms of player production? Do you think there is any chance Uruguay will return to their former strength or have those days gone?
Thomas Wojciechowski

Victims of their own success - they did a fantastic job spreading the popularity of the game, but once football had caught on as a global phenomenon it is clearly difficult for a country with such a small population to compete at the highest level. They were pioneers in the style of the game (I count their win in the 1924 Olympics as the birth of modern football - the Europeans had never seen anything like it, and it set off a fever for the game), pioneers in organisation (staged the first World Cup), and pioneers in the selection of black players. Considering the size of the population they still produce a large amount of players, and their national team are no pushovers. But the domestic game clearly suffers from the limitations of the Uruguayan market - it's impossible for the clubs to hold on to their best players. The Uruguayan clubs used to be heavyweights in the Copa Libertadores, South America's equivalent of the Champions League - but not since 1989 has one of their representatives reached the semi-final.

There seems to have been a change in the last few years with more young Brazilians turning up in the former USSR. At Shakhtar Donesk and CSKA - a player 'Jo' that Man City want. It just seems such an incongruous place for Brazilians to show up - can you shed any light? And what's the inside track on 'Jo'? I've never heard of him.
Stuart Banham

Professional football is always a case of 'follow the money' - there are some big clubs in the former USSR who now have very wealthy backers, and once the offer is on the table it is very hard to resist - especially if it comes with a chance of shining in the Champions League. Jo is a player I've liked ever since he broke into the Corinthians side as a 16-year-old, beanpole build left-footed striker with a good all round game. You can pass up to him back to goal, or play behind the defence for him to run on, combines well - a very interesting young player.