The romantic managerial appointment that Sunderland must avoid this summer

They called it ‘The Last Dance’, which, to be fair, wasn’t the most inaccurate moniker in marketing history, provided the dance in question was an arthritic shuffle to ‘Can’t Help Falling In Love’ at the dimming end of a retirement home disco. Jermain Defoe’s hysterically-yearned-for Sunderland homecoming a couple of seasons ago was less ‘Michael Jordan at the Chicago Bulls’, more ‘Michael Jordan at the Birmingham Barons’. And we didn’t even get an adaptation of Space Jam out the back of it.

Now, however, Defoe is back again. Only this time, he wants the top job. In fairness, he is talking a good game; and by ‘good game’, I of course mean, ‘a constant barrage of entirely unsubstantiated nonsense’. That being said, who among us has not lied a little on a CV. I know I have; nobody at 3 Added Minutes is yet to figure out that I’m actually just three semi-literate piglets in a trench coat.

In a series of recent interviews, Defoe has suggested that he has held ‘informal talks’ with the board at the Stadium of Light - which for all we know could amount to little more than him sliding into Kyril Louis-Dreyfus’ DMs to send a ‘U up?’ text at 2am one night. He has also made the wildly optimistic claim that if he were to be appointed manager on Wearside, Jack Clarke would be convinced to stay at the club. Again, this is a bold statement from a man who couldn’t even convince himself to stay at Sunderland. Twice.

‘If I was manager, he would stay’, Defoe told the Sunderland Echo, ‘He [Clarke] is one of those players that you don't have to coach. You coach him by giving him the ball and letting him express himself and do what he does.

‘You can't really coach players like that. If the club can hold on to him, he'll be amazing. I think for any manager or young coach to work with players like that would obviously be a dream because when you've got good players, it makes your job easier.’

And that’s all well and good, but what about the players that Defoe would have to coach? As Michael Beale and Mike Dodds have proven in dizzyingly short order, Sunderland’s is a prodigious dressing room lacking in meaningful direction. For every Clarke, there are countless other starlets who desperately need a very specific kind of guidance. Perhaps the former England striker, with his work in Tottenham Hotspur’s academy system, has cultivated a knack for putting an arm round young talents and coaxing the best out of them. Then again, perhaps he has not. Or, at least, not to the extent that Sunderland so sorely need.

Defoe is beloved on Wearside, and with justifiable reason. Between his heroics on the pitch and his heartwarming relationship with Bradley Lowery, the centre forward carved out a cosy nook for himself in the unanimous affections of Mackems everywhere. But as grouchy as it may sound, the Black Cats’ next appointment cannot be made on sentimentality or romance alone, and there is no denying that Defoe would represent a mammoth gamble.

Of course, the counterargument to this is that all icons, managerial or otherwise, have to begin somewhere. Jose Mourinho was once Sir Bobby Robson’s translator at Barcelona. The Beatles were once just a house band in Hamburg. Homer Simpson was once little more than a scribble on the back page of Matt Groening’s notepad.

But even within that context, it does feel as if there are better relatively unproven prospects out there. Will Still, the bookmakers’ enduring favourite, is one - albeit with much more first team experience than Defoe. Rene Maric, currently the chief of Bayern Munich’s auspicious U19 side, is another. And then there are the more conventional options; Danny Rohl, who could become available if Sheffield Wednesday are somehow relegated this weekend, turning their trip to the North East on Saturday into something of a custody ladder match; Marti Cifuentes, whose QPR outfit boast the tenth-best record in the Championship since his arrival at Loftus Road - no mean feat given the sorry state they were in when he took over in West London.

All of this is to say that while Defoe may desperately want the Sunderland job, there are no concrete indications that the admiration is reciprocated, or indeed any outstanding reasons as to why it might be. As somebody who holds the 41-year-old in especially high regard, I, like many others on Wearside, wish him nothing but the best in his forthcoming managerial endeavours; I’m just also incredibly wary of such a rash brushstroke of experimentation at such a crucial juncture in the Black Cats’ immediate future. It’s nothing personal, but Defoe simply doesn’t feel like the right man, right now.