You’d have to be crazy to want to manage the England football team. Luiz Felipe Scolari clearly isn’t.

It took Sven Goran Eriksson five years to tire of the English media’s obsession with the incumbent of the impossible job. Luiz Felipe Scolari, his nemesis and the FA’s chosen successor, took less than 48 hours to decide that the radioactive tracksuit would not fit.

Scolari, a World Cup winner with Brazil and the man singled out by the FA’s tortuous appointments process as best candidate for England, yesterday announced that he would not be putting his name on the £2.5m-a-year contract offered to him on Wednesday.

After waking on Thursday morning to find 20 reporters on his doorstep in Lisbon and numerous others poring over his background, Big Phil decided to withdraw his name from the process…

Smart lad, that Luiz.