MARTIN SAMUEL: If Vitor Pereira and Fabio Cannavaro are on the shortlist, Everton really ARE in a mess... what credentials do either have to prove they are the man to navigate this relegation fight?

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So, Fabio Cannavaro, what first attracted you to the insanely wealthy footballing hotbeds of Saudi Arabia, China and the United Arab Emirates?

Mrs Merton may not have been first choice to run a Premier League football club, but she might have done a better job than Farhad Moshiri at Everton. At least she would have cut to the chase at the interview stage.

Why would one of the most successful players in Italian football history, a World Cup winner with 136 caps, the only defender to win the Ballon d'Or since Matthias Sammer in 1996, and a double LaLiga champion at Real Madrid, work exclusively in football's lucrative outposts since entering management in 2014?

If you want to know the mess that Everton are in, look at some of the coaches deemed worthy of closer inspection. Also on the short list, Vitor Pereira. A serial winner, apparently. More of this later.

Fabio Cannavaro (left) and Vitor Pereira (right) are names in the mix for the vacant Everton job

Everton need a manager that can come in with an instant impact in this relegation battle

Let's start with Cannavaro. He began his management career as technical consultant and later coach of Al-Ahli in Dubai, where his playing days ended. He moved on to Guangzhou Evergrande in the Chinese League in 2014 and a year later returned to the Middle East with Al-Nassr of Saudi Arabia.

In 2016, it was back to China again with Tianjin Quanjian by which time the Super League there was paying colossal wages to players such as Oscar, Hulk, Alexandre Pato and Axel Witsel.

Cannavaro has been in China ever since, going back to Guangzhou Evergrande with the job running alongside a brief spell in charge of the national team in 2019.

China's most successful club is currently beset by financial difficulties caused by a liquidity crisis at the Evergrande Real Estate Group. Coincidentally, Cannavaro left last September - the same month that Evergrande missed off-shore bond payments of £61.6million and the crisis went global. Maybe the magic had gone out of it.

So we understand what aspect of the modern game seems most to interest Cannavaro, and what might appeal to him about Everton and the richest league in the world, too. What cannot be so easily understood is what Everton's ownership see in him.

Cannavaro has not been involved in a major European league, as player or manager, since 2009-10, when he returned to Juventus for a season that was little short of disastrous. Juventus came seventh and did not extend his contract. Cannavaro expressed an interest in returning to his hometown club, Napoli. That brought a frosty response. Hello Dubai.

Clearly, there will be an agent working hard on Cannavaro's behalf, and the suggestion is he's already got him an interview at Everton.

Maybe it's an agent who Everton want to favour, so he can recruit them more players like the present bunch, steering the club to 16th place and a relegation fight for a mere outlay of £500m.

Cannavaro is one of the finest to play the game but his managerial experience is limited

It would appear Everton do not have that sort of money any more, but that may not bother Cannavaro. There is a certain type of coach who only cares about one cheque clearing, and that's his.

Cannavaro had the chance to manage the Polish national team, who are in a play-off with Russia and then Sweden or Czech Republic, two games off a berth at the 2022 World Cup. He declined. He knows where the money is on the European continent. It's not Poznan.

Maybe another agent pushes Pereira, too. He recently spent three years in Shanghai having worked across Europe with varying degrees of success. The 'serial winner' tag is based on two titles at Porto, and another at Olympiacos in Greece.

Yet a degree of context is required. Pereira took over a Porto team who had delivered the title to his three predecessors, too.

He was at the end of a run of nine titles in 11 seasons. It was similar at Olympiacos. He won their fifth consecutive championship in a sequence of 19 from 21, dating back to the 1996-97 season.

He took over at Greece's equivalent of Manchester City. Everton are not Manchester City. They're not even Leicester City at the moment.

Pereira (right) spent the last three years in Shanghai, where he won the Super Cup in 2019

So let's look at Pereira without the best squad, without the best club. He went to Fenerbahce and came second and then returned several years later, and was sacked mid-season with the club fifth and 14 points adrift of Trabzonspor. That's his most recent job.

There was also, however, a rescue mission at TSV 1860 Munich, languishing near the bottom of Germany's second division. Pereira took over mid-season and Munich did not shift and were relegated. The executives resigned and new owner Hasan Ismaik would not pay the licence for tier three, so they ended up in Regionalliga Bayern.

Of all the jobs Pereira has had, TSV Munich is the nearest to Everton, in as much as it's a club in crisis, fearing relegation. Porto and Olympiacos were the alphas in their leagues when he came in.

That is not so say he didn't do a good job, but he arrived in a position of enormous strength. The man he succeeded at Porto was Andre Villas-Boas, who had been poached by Chelsea having won the league. That is not exactly the situation inherited by the successor to Rafa Benitez.

At least Pereira chose to work in major European leagues, though. Cannavaro could surely have found employment in Italy, or Spain, had he wanted to. He has at least the status of former players such as Frank Lampard or Wayne Rooney, who are also believed to be on Everton's list. So why didn't he?

Why didn't he take a chance at the equivalent of Derby, why did he not wait for a club the size of Rangers, like Steven Gerrard? It's hard to believe he was without opportunity. Napoli have had six managers since Cannavaro retired. Parma, where he also played, have had seven.

Parma, like Derby, were a top-division club who fell through the leagues, all the way to tier four after bankruptcy. During Cannavaro's time as coach they have played in every Italian division, D to A.

Potentially, it's a place for a young coach to learn and do great things. Cannavaro chose the desert.

Majority shareholder Farhad Moshiri (left) is seeking a successor to Rafa Benitez (right)

Shortly after leaving China, Cannavaro announced he wanted to test himself in Europe. He had been taking in training sessions held by Pep Guardiola and Thomas Tuchel. Yes, so has everyone.

John Terry went on a grand tour of coaching minds after leaving Aston Villa, and couldn't get a foot through the door at Bristol City.

And what about Cannavaro's recent career suggests he is ready for the crisis at Everton? Learning from Guardiola remotely sounds lovely. But Everton's reality is a series of cup finals at places like Newcastle, Southampton and Watford. Challenges Cannavaro has never faced as a coach.

Neither has Pereira, for all his experience. He was involved in one relegation battle as a manager, and lost it.

That these are two names on the Everton short list suggests a club that has lost its way. What first attracted Cannavaro to Goodison Park? If Everton's management don't know the answer to that, they're in even bigger trouble than we thought.

WATFORD PLAN IS BLUEPRINT FOR DISASTER

Watford have enacted their Premier League blueprint. You know, the one that got them relegated the last time.

Claudio Ranieri is on his way and incoming will be Watford's third manager of the season.

It was the same in 2019-20. Javi Gracia until September, Quique Sanchez Flores until December, then Nigel Pearson, also gone before the season's end. Hayden Mullins did two stints as caretaker. Watford went down.

Nobody is arguing that Ranieri had the required impact but Watford are a notoriously difficult club to manage because the players know the manager will always take the blame. It is not as if the upheaval the last time worked.

If the club had made it clear Ranieri would be supported, the players would have had to respond. This way, they sit tight and wait for the next one, or the next one, or the next one.

SAVE THE DATE AS ZAHA AND CO CAN LIGHT UP WEMBLEY

England's fixture with Ivory Coast on March 29 might be one for the diary. 

Probably the best friendly in recent memory was England's draw with Ghana in 2011, because to beat England at Wembley genuinely meant something to the visitors. They went at it hammer and tongs and, as a result, so did England. 

Let's hope Wilfried Zaha and his team-mates arrive with similar ambition. 

Wilfried Zaha (right) and his Ivory Coast team-mates will face England at Wembley in March

COE RIGHT TO REJECT OLYMPICS BOYCOTT 

The Winter Olympics begins next week and, as it nears, there will be more debate about whether Great Britain should be there at all, given China's human rights record. Even in a sporting context China should be a pariah nation, given what we know - or do not - about the silencing of tennis player Peng Shuai.

Lord Coe, president of UK Athletics and an IOC member, has brushed off the Government's political and diplomatic boycott of the Games, however, and he is right. China is not going to be brought to heel because Rupert Staudinger swerves the luge, or the sports minister stays home. 

Coe was part of the British team who defied the Government and went to the 1980 Olympics in Moscow. Not only did it give him the highlight of his athletics career but years later, when Coe was campaigning for London 2012, his loyalty to the Olympic movement was a winning factor. Had he joined the boycott, it would have been remembered.

'Boycotts are historically illiterate and intellectually dishonest,' said Coe. 'And a political boycott is meaningless.'

True. Equally, the last thing this Government is short of is another party.

FIA INVESTIGATION PUTS LEWIS IN A BIND 

Lewis Hamilton remains disillusioned with Formula One and it will not have improved his demeanour that the FIA will only publish their investigation into the travesty that was the Abu Dhabi Grand Prix two days before the start of the new season in Bahrain. 

It means Hamilton must commit without knowing whether the governing body are going to admit to their abject mishandling of the climax to the last championship. 

Anyone would think that lot are a little dodgy. 

Lewis Hamilton's future in F1 remains in the balance but he needs to make a call before Bahrain

HARRY POTTER AND THE BROOMSTICK BERKS

Sitting at a pavement bar in Melbourne last week, the theatre next door turned out. The show was Harry Potter and the Cursed Child, except actual children were in short supply. Mostly, the clientele were adult. Maybe Harry Potter took them back to their youth. Even so, grown-up plays with an absence of wizards are available.

The heroic and heroically funny Linda Smith put 'Adults Who Read Harry Potter Books' in Room 101. 'What's wrong with them?' she asked. 'I look at them on the train, they haven't even got the grace to disguise it with pornography. Oh, the lack of ambition. I feel like swapping it over with Madame Bovary. Just try it - you're 37.'

And then there are the players of Quidditch. They exist, 25,000 of them worldwide. Raising the ante from adults reading Harry Potter books: adults playing Harry Potter games. Smith loved cricket, so God knows what she would have made of this. 

For Quidditch, actual Quidditch, certainly isn't possible in human form. It exists in the inspired imagination of JK Rowling. It is for wizards. If you are running around with a broomstick between your legs pretending to fly, you are not playing Quidditch. You are a berk, in a field, and as with the world of literature, proper, grown-up sports are available.

The game of Quidditch, which became famous in the Harry Potter series, is popular in the USA

Yet in America where this nonsense originated, players of Quidditch have been invited to take a survey because the sport is being renamed. 

'The leagues are hoping a name change can help them continue to distance themselves from the works of JK Rowling, the author of the Harry Potter book series, who has increasingly come under scrutiny for her anti-trans positions in recent years,' says the official statement.

Distance themselves? How can they distance themselves? She made them. They are trying to steal her imagination and copyright it as Quidball, Quadball, Quadraball, Quickball, Quidstrike or Quicker, all now being sounded out for marketing purposes.

JK Rowling created an entire magical universe and these dullards have not even got the wit to think beyond the letter Q. And all because the author occupies the radical position that women exist. What a strange, creepy world this has become. And far more sinister than anything found in Harry Potter.

ASHES WOE HASN'T MOVED THE NEEDLE 

As predicted, next summer's domestic cricket schedule takes no account of the recent Ashes debacle.

Nothing has changed, the white ball remains king, and Tom Harrison's speech was just more empty words. Each format's place in the game was decided long ago and the promised review is a PR stunt, no more.