When Luiz Felipe Scolari arrives to take over at Chelsea, he will be in charge of players whose ideal woman probably has blonde hair, high heels, a hardcore shopping habit and precious little between the ears.

Not so, Mrs Scolari - the ultimate anti-Wag.

Big Phil has been married to the same woman, Olga, for 33 years and - unlike the man that the FA once tried to get him to replace, Sven-Goran Eriksson - he has never been associated with the slightest hint of extra-marital scandal.

And the Portugal coach's decision to come to Stamford Bridge after the botched attempt to get him to take the England job will only have been made with Olga's consent.

A former colleague once said: "He doesn't take a decision without consulting his wife. Olga told him to take [Brazilian midfielder] Kaka to the 2002 World Cup instead of Djalminha. He obeyed her."

An accomplished painter, 58-yearold Mrs Scolari is a member of the San Diego Museum of Art's Guild of Artists, and after university - she was a biology graduate - trained as a teacher before quitting to follow her husband's career round the world.

Scolari, who is being paid by Chelsea £6 million a year, met her more than 40 years ago when they were teenagers in their home town of Porto Alegre in Brazil. She was working at her family's hotel and he had a part-time job as a petrol pump attendant between playing football.

The couple have two sons - Leonardo, 23, and Fabricio, 16.

For Olga living in London would be a dream come true. A few years ago Scolari said she would "love to live in Florence or London".

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.