Luiz Felipe Scolari Biography

Luiz Felipe Scolari, born 9 November 1948 in Passo Fundo, Rio Grande do Sul, is a Brazilian football coach who has been serving as coach of Cruzeiro since 2020. In 2002, Scolari guided the Brazilian national team to the final of the World Cup and won the title.

He was appointed coach of the Portuguese national team in 2003 and by the next year, he had brought the team to the final of the 2004 European Championship. In the final, he had the chance to give Portugal a major victory on home soil, but Greece proved too difficult. He also managed the team at the 2008 European Championship but stepped down after being knocked out by Germany.

When Portugal was knocked out in the quarter-finals, "Big Phil" took over as Chelsea coach, replacing Avram Grant, who had already been sacked by the board of directors.

As of Monday 9 February 2009, Scolari was already following in the footsteps of his predecessors. He was fired as Chelsea's manager because of disappointing results. A 0-0 draw at home against Hull on Saturday 7 February was the last appearance for Luiz Felipe Scolari at Stamford Bridge. The team was knocked out of the League Cup against Burnley FC.

Scolari was in charge of Uzbek FC Bunyodkor, in which Brazilian Rivaldo played, between 8 June 2009 and 29 May 2010.

Scolari became the national coach of the Brazilian national team again in 2012. He was able to win the Confederations Cup in 2013 after winning the final 3-0 against Spain. He managed to take Brazil to the semi-finals of the 2014 World Cup on home soil for the first time in 12 years, only to be humiliated 1-7 by Germany. Scolari announced his resignation from the coaching post after the exit.

All You Need to Know About Luiz Felipe Scolari Biography

Since his second coaching spell at Brazil national team, he signed for the

football club in 2014. Between 2015 and 2017 he coached Guangzhou Evergrande in the Chinese Super League. After two other coaching stints at Palmeiras and Cruzeiro, he is now coaching Gremio again.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Information

Now that we know the Brazilian coach much better, in this section of

Luiz Felipe Scolari biography

we will share more general information about him such as

Luiz Felipe Scolari nationality

to let you know him even better.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Bio

• Full Name: Luiz Felipe Scolari

• Nickname: Big Phil

• Profession: Professional Football Coach

Luiz Felipe Scolari Physical Stats

• Weight: 76 Kg

• Height: 1.78 m

• Eye Color: Blue

• Hair Color: Grey

Luiz Felipe Scolari Football Information

• Position: Defender

• Jersey Number: N/A

• Professional Debut: 1973

Luiz Felipe Scolari Date of Birth and Personal Info

• Date of Birth: 9 November 1948

• Birth Place: Passo Fundo, Brazil

• Zodiac Sign: Scorpio

• Nationality: Brazilian

Now stay tuned to this section of

Luiz Felipe Scolari biography

as we want to share some info about

Luiz Felipe Scolari childhood

.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Early Life

Luiz Felipe Scolari is the son of former football player Benjamin Scolari. Benjamin was an Italian who originally came from Venice, but who immigrated with his family to Brazil. Just like his father, Scolari also pursued a football career but was not considered to be a great talent.

In his native country, Luiz Felipe was called "perna-de-pau" (wooden leg), which meant that he had a lumbering style and was not a good player. He was a defender whose greatest quality was his endurance. As a result, he was often awarded the captain's armband during his playing career.

In 1973, Scolari made his debut at the modest SER Caxias. He stayed with Caxias for seven years and then went on to play for

, Novo Hamburgo and CSA. In 1981, he won the state championship of Alagoas with this last club.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Profile

In the early 1980s, he embarked on his coaching career with the provincial club CS Alagoano, where he was crowned state champion of Alagoas in 1982, marking his first title as a trainer. This was followed by several spells as coach of different teams in Brazil and, at the Saudi Arabian club

, the first job abroad, until he coached Grêmio from Porto Alegre, a famous Brazilian club, in 1987.

Nevertheless, Scolari spent only a short time there, transferring to Goiás EC after only a year. Afterwards, he left for

for two years, initially managing Al Qadsia Kuwait and then the Kuwaiti national team.

However, he came back to his native Brazil in 1991 to coach Criciúma EC, where he was able to win the Copa do Brasil in 1991, securing his first major title. Later that year, he departed Brazil again to head to Saudi Arabia and take up the coaching of the successful Al-Ahli club. He then spent a year with his former club Al Qadisiya Kuwait.

Scolari then returned to Brazil in 1993 and took up another contract with Grêmio. He won a title in each season there, with the Cup in 1994, the Copa Libertadores in 1995 and the Brazilian league title in 1996. Afterwards, Scolari joined

in Japan and went back to Brazil.

There he took up an offer from Sociedade Esportiva

in São Paulo. He won the Brazilian Cup and the Copa Mercosur in 1998 and the Copa Libertadores in 1999. He left São Paulo in 2000 to join

Esporte Clube in Belo Horizonte.

Now stay tuned to this section of Luiz Felipe Scolari biography as we want to share some info about his Brazil national team career.

National coach of Brazil

Scolari took over as national coach for the second time in his career in June 2001. He was appointed as the successor to Émerson Leão as the national coach of Brazil. Leão, like his predecessor

, had trouble getting Brazilian top players to take part in qualifying matches. Key players such as Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos played mostly in Europe, where their clubs were unwilling to make them available for international matches.

As a result, by the time Scolari took over from Leão, Brazil was not in good shape. With just five World Cup qualifiers to go, there was every chance that Brazil would fail to qualify for the World Cup in Japan and South Korea. They lost their first match under Scolari to Uruguay and later failed to win against Argentina and Bolivia. However, Scolari's team was able to secure qualifications.

In the build-up to the World Cup, he decided to stop selecting experienced striker Romário for the Brazilian squad. The 35-year-old striker was not included in the World Cup squad, despite pressure from the media and an appeal from a tearful Romário.

However, star players like Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaká, Cafú, Rivaldo and Roberto Carlos were all included in the selection and guided Brazil easily through the group stage. Brazil won all its group matches, defeating Belgium and England in the knockout round.

In the semi-final,

narrowly beat Turkey, which had already been defeated in the group stage. The Brazilians went on to beat Germany 2-0 in the final after two goals from top marksman Ronaldo. Scolari stepped down as national coach after the World Cup.

Portuguese National Team

Since 2003, Scolari was in charge of the

and helped the Portuguese to advance to the final of the 2004 European Football Championship. He was, together with Otto Rehhagel, manager of Greece in the final, the first foreign coach to have reached the final of this competition.

The British press in April 2006 suggested that he was a potential replacement for England coach Sven-Göran Eriksson, however, Scolari refused the job. After the 1-0 semi-final defeat of his team against France at the 2006 World Cup in Germany, Scolari claimed that referee Jorge Larrionda (Uruguay) sided indirectly with the French and thus had an influence on the match. At the third-place play-off on 8 July 2006 in Stuttgart, Scolari's team was defeated 3-1 by Germany.

On 12 September 2007, Scolari got into a fight with an opponent, the Serbian Ivica Dragutinović, in the European Championship qualifying match against Serbia. It is said that in this incident Scolari punched Dragutinovic in the face.

However, Scolari later said that he had only touched Dragutinovic's hair. When video evidence emerged, it turned out that Scolari had not punched him because the latter had avoided the punch in time. UEFA suspended Scolari for four international matches. Scolari guided Portugal to the quarter-finals of the EURO 2008 but was beaten by Germany 2:3.

Chelsea FC

On 1 July 2008, Scolari was appointed coach of

but was sacked there by 9 February 2009 following a lack of success. Now stay tuned to this section of Luiz Felipe Scolari biography as we want to share some info about his career in Uzbekistan.

Bunyodkor Tashkent

Scolari was appointed head coach and director of the football academy at Uzbek champions Bunjodkor Tashkent in June 2009. Owing to the club's financial difficulties, Scolari terminated his contract early in May 2010, after just one season in charge.

Palmeiras

Following the disappointing performance of the Seleção at the 2010 World Cup, Scolari emerged briefly as the next coach in line to replace Dunga. However, he opted to sign a contract with Palmeiras until the end of 2012 and went on to win the 2012 Copa do Brasil with the club.

In mid-September 2012, when Palmeiras dropped to penultimate place in the table, Scolari was sacked. Palmeiras were relegated from the first division at the end of the 2012 season.

Return to the Brazilian national team

Scolari took over the Brazilian national team once again on 29 November 2012 from

, who was fired six days earlier. His contract ran until after the 2014 World Cup in his home country. With the support of former three-time national team coach Carlos Alberto Parreira as technical director, his team clinched the 2013 Confederations Cup with a 3-0 win over Spain in the final.

However, at the 2014 World Cup, Brazil only made it to the third-place play-off against the Netherlands, after losing 3-0 to Germany in the semi-finals. In the end, the record of his second term was 19 wins in 29 matches, six draws and four defeats. Subsequently, on 14 July 2014, the president of the Brazil Football Federation (CBF), José Maria Marin, accepted the resignation of Scolari.

Other stints

Scolari switched to Grêmio Porto Alegre on 29 July 2014. He replaced Fabio Cannavaro as head coach at

Evergrande in China in June 2015. With the club, Scolari worked until 2017, before returning to Brazil to take charge of SE Palmeiras for the second time. With the club, he won the national championship in 2018. He was fired early in September 2019.

Cruzeiro EC signed him for the second time when he was 71 years old. However, the club was in a severe economic crisis and was 19th on the table after the 15th matchday of the 2020 Série B. His contract was terminated prematurely after the second to last matchday.

The now 72-year-old Scolari took another coaching job in July 2021. It was the fourth time he signed with Grêmio Porto Alegre. Now stay tuned to this section of

Luiz Felipe Scolari biography

as we want to share some info about his coaching style.

Style of Play

In almost every team he has coached, Scolari has earned credibility. To achieve this, he conducts his teams with an "iron hand", not being afraid to remove the stars of his teams. Using this strategy, he guarantees team unity and, consequently, he achieves success in the teams he manages.

He is a big fan of 4-2-3-1 and in almost all of his teams, we have seen you using that playing system. However, his teams sometimes also play with 4-4-2.

Reception

He is regarded to be one of the best Brazilian football coaches of his generation, which was proved many times by awards like Brazilian Coach of the Year or South American Coach of the Year. He has also achieved great success with many teams during his career.

Luiz Felipe Scolari outside Football

He has always been famous for his Catholic faith. During the victory of the fifth

with the Brazilian team, he took with him and his players an image of Our Lady of Caravaggio the saint venerated among the Italian descendants of southern Brazil.

He was a Physical Education teacher at A. J. Renner School, also called Industrial School, is situated in the municipality of Montenegro, a city approximately 60 km away from Porto Alegre. He was not so famous at that time, but he worked hard on his educational activities.

Moreover, he was also a physical education teacher in the city of Caxias do Sul, and he taught at institutions such as Escola Estadual Cristóvão Mendonza and Colégio La Salle Carmo.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Personal Life

In this section of Luiz Felipe Scolari biography, we will take a deeper look into his personal life and share some information about things like

Luiz Felipe Scolari life story

and

Luiz Felipe Scolari religion

, stay tuned.

Family, Children and Relationships

According to Luiz himself, he started dating his wife Olga Scolari when he was 18 years old. When Luiz was in Porto Alegre, he had lived in the hotel of his wife’s parents for six months and it was when he started dating Olga. After seven years of dating, they married each other and have two sons, Leonardo and Fabricio Scolari.

Philanthropy

The famous Brazilian coach has always been active in many charitable projects during his career. When he was manager of the Brazil national team, he managed his team in a charity match played against Bolivia national team, which the proceeds of that match was given to the parents of a child who was killed during a Copa Libertadores match.

Legal Issues

At the time of writing this article, there are no reports of any legal issues or disputes regarding Luiz Felipe Scolari in the English or Portuguese media.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Career Statistics

In this section of Luiz Felipe Scolari biography, we will take a look at his career stats on the international and club level.

Club

Between 1973 and 1979, Felipe Scolari was playing for the Caxias club in Brazil, where he appeared in a total of 67 league matches for them. For the next two years, he played for three different Brazilian teams, however, there are no stats available from that period.

Managerial

As of 28 August 2021, Luiz Felipe Scolari has been the coach of many clubs in different parts of the world in a total of 1457 matches and with 736 wins, 391 draws and 330 defeats, he has a win ratio of 50.51 percent.

Luiz Felipe Scolari Honors

As a coach, he has won numerous awards and titles during his career, with the most notable of them including Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, Copa do Brasil, Copa Libertadores, Recopa Sudamericana, Chinese Super League, AFC Champions League, Arabian Gulf Cup, FIFA World Cup and many others.

The list of his personal awards and titles include Brasileirão Coach of the Year, South American Coach of the Year and IFFHS World's Best National Coach, among others.

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