Big Phil bosses Chelsea, but Mrs Scolari's really in charge

Scolari is quite open about his love for his wife. When asked why he had not watched a taped England match before Portugal's quarter final against them at Euro 2004, he said: "I have a tape of it but I won't be watching it when I get to my house. I want to see my wife - if you know what I mean."

There may not be any prospect of Scolari's personal life being plastered over the newspapers - but that's not to say there won't be fireworks.

This is the coach who once punched a journalist in Brazil for asking the wrong question, who swears and spits on the touchline and, when banished to the stands during a game for his antics, threatened the referee with the words: "I'll wait for you outside, mate." A man with a fearsome temper, 59-year-old Scolari got into trouble with Uefa during Portugal's qualifying campaign when he slapped Serbia's Ivica Dragutinovic.

The unabashedly conservative views of the Gene Hackmanlookalike are also likely to provoke controversy among Chelsea's more liberal supporters.

When he was in charge of Brazil he said he would throw players off the team if he discovered they were gay, and got into hot water for expressing admiration for Chile's murderous dictator Augusto Pinochet. Strongly religious, he leads prayer circles, carries religious statuettes in his pocket and once made his players put "holy pebbles" in their socks.

Like many modern business leaders, he is a big admirer of Sun Tzu's The Art of War, the 2,500-year-old Chinese treatise on military strategy, and even gave every Brazilian team member a copy during the run-up to their 2002 World Cup campaign.