Thaksin Shinawatra has offered Luiz Felipe Scolari £3.25m a year to manage Manchester City and, in a move which has echoes of the Football Association's approach to the Brazilian ahead of the 2006 World Cup, he wants an answer before Scolari leads Portugal into the European Championship next month.
The approach to Scolari came, via a Brazilian agent, from Srisumrid Jack Taweesuk, City's executive director, whose attempts to lure the Portugal national manager are understood to have included a promise that money will be available to Scolari to buy "the players that he wants".
Though some in Portugal doubt the 59-year-old's willingness to trade his immense personal following in the country for Sven Goran Eriksson's job in Manchester, the sums of money on offer do seem to be attractive to him. The noises from Portugal last week were that Scolari was reluctant to remove his two sons, Fabricio and Leonardo, from further education in Lisbon and that the proximity of Spain's La Liga was therefore more of an attraction to him. But there was a suggestion from sources close to Scolari yesterday that Leonardo, his eldest son and a law student, could benefit from studying in Britain. Fabricio, it is thought, would stay with Scolari's wife in Lisbon if he took the job.
Scolari offered £3.2m to replace Eriksson - Premier League, Football - The Independent