Luiz Felipe Scolari fits the stereotype of the gaucho cowboy so well that he could have been invented by the tourist board of his home state, Rio Grande do Sul.
With his hillbilly Latino moustache, penchant for barbecued meats and never travelling without a pot of matte tea, he also embodies the gaucho traits of toughness, machismo and determination. Rio Grande do Sul is the only state in Brazil that tried to instigate a revolution for its own sovereignty, and the red in its flag represents the blood spilt in battle.
As the southernmost state, the climate there is the coldest in Brazil. It sometimes even snows. As a result, the football played there is more physical than in the rest of the country. As a defender for various second-rung state teams, Scolari was of the sort who would rather boot the ball upfield than fancyfooting with Brazilian-style ball skills. As a coach he gained a reputation for a negative, pragmatic game which was not always pretty but won him almost every trophy he could have.
In Brazil, coaches are usually in the shadow of their famous players. With Scolari, it is the other way around. Through force of personality - and playing up the national archetype of the disciplinarian, paternalistic leader - he always imposes himself as the dominant force in the team. During matches he is always at the side of the pitch, shouting and gesticulating for as long as the ball is in play.
His sense of pragmatism also covers his use of gamesmanship. He would do whatever he could to make sure his teams won, including hiding the ball or throwing substitute balls on the pitch to waste time. When he was made coach of Brazil, in 2001, the public reacted with fear that he might get up to these tricks in the World Cup. He never did - despite his fiery temperament he has never lost his cool on the international stage.
As he has progressed in his career, picking up titles and earning millions, Scolari has hardly changed from the teenager who used to work as a petrol pump attendent. People who knew him decades ago describe him in exactly the same terms as those who know him now - discreet, modest, simple, ambitious, tough.
He is married to Olga, a former biology teacher and amateur painter, and they have two sons, Leonardo and Fabricio, who live with them in Lisbon. He is never in the gossip columns and he lives an unostentatious life - jogging along the beach in the morning, usually spending the day in the Portuguese federation office, then staying at home in the evening.
As someone whose authoritarian manner is reminiscent of the Latin American caudillo, it is perhaps unsurprising that Scolari is politically conservative. He once said that the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet "did a lot of good", which caused him trouble in the left-leaning Brazilian press. Yet he is never bothered what people write about him. He has come under huge pressure in Brazil (to call up Romario for the 2002 World Cup) and in Portugal (by leaving out Vitor Baia) and it has never had any effect.
Beyond tactics, his skills are especially strong in motivational techniques. "He has an extraordinary skill at getting close to players," says Ruy Carlos Ostermann, his official biographer. "He has a surprising understanding of the psychology of a football player. At the World Cup in 2002, the president of the Brazilian football confederation told me that never before had the atmosphere in the national team been so good, and that was down to Big Phil."
His methods included playing the goals of Brazil's 3-0 defeat to France in the 1998 World Cup final over and over to the team before the 2002 final, and he also uses music to create camaraderie and national pride. His role in the 2002 campaign was so great that the press referred to the squad as the Scolari family.
Scolari is a very religious man, and in 2002 he promised his saint - Our Lady of Caravaggio, who has a sanctuary in Rio Grande do Sul - that he would make a pilgrimage there if the team qualified for the World Cup. When they did he travelled the 10 miles from Caxias to the shrine on foot.
