Move over, Nancy, English football has a new leading lady. The replacement for Jose Mourinho as coach of Chelsea comes complete with a wife who is a television star in their native Israel.

Tzofit Grant, 42, has at different times bathed in liquid chocolate and spaghetti, received a spanking from a sadomasochist and drunk her own urine, all while on air hosting a chat show.

Football experts predicted yesterday that she would bring new glamour to the Premier League and outshine Nancy Dell’Olio, 48, the long-suffering girlfriend of Sven-Goran Eriksson, the Manchester City manager and former England coach.

But the wife of Avram Grant, 52, who has switched from director of football to manage the first team at Chelsea, also has a serious side.

She has spoken emotionally of how she was sexually harassed by a neighbour at the age of nine and how her brother suffers from schizophrenia.

Websites in Israel were yesterday describing her as everything from “an obnoxious talk-show host” to a “sex icon”.

On the eve of today’s Premier League clash between Manchester United and Chelsea, British soccer writers were warming to the idea of a colourful new character on the sidelines.

When her husband was coach of the Israeli national team, she veered from being his loudest supporter in the stadium to screaming abuse when his team played badly.

One Israeli soccer writer said yesterday: “The tabloids will love her. She will be bigger than Nancy because she wants the limelight. But there will be no sex scandals. They are a very happy couple.”

An Israeli journalist in Tel Aviv said: “She should be the partner of Jose Mourinho rather than Avram Grant because she is much more exciting.”

But there was a word of warning. One senior sports commentator said: “She could be Chelsea’s Achilles heel. The terraces will have great fun with her.”

Grant, who learnt to strip down a rifle when she did military service in Israel, feels no need to conform in public. She drank her own urine from a glass on Milkshake, the magazine programme she hosted, while exploring whether it had any health benefits. The audience gasped, but she giggled and said: “Mmm, it tastes like water from the Dead Sea.”

In an interview last week with an Israeli military TV station, she said: “I hope some of Avram’s critics will think again about what they were doing to him.

“Avram is a person who is used to thinking positively. He does not deal with negative energies . . . He just moves forward.”

Uri Geller, the Israeli-born spoon-bender who was once co-chairman of Exeter City football club, said: “She is a big star in Israel. She has a large personality and had a terrific talk show.”

The couple met when he was 37 and she was 28 and married three months later.

She was an actress but got her big break when she became a co-host of Milkshake, originally a daytime show. She made it more feisty and it moved to a late-night slot.

As well as drinking urine, she has sat drinking red wine in a bath of spaghetti and tomato sauce wearing a bathing suit.

She once hosted a “miracle” on the show when a healer was supposed to use his “electrified hands” to make a disabled man walk. It turned out to be a hoax.

When she appeared with the sadomasochist, she allowed him to spank her and then accepted his invitation to punch him hard in the face.

She said she needed something to make her angry. “Think of Avram,” said her guest.

Her husband came to British football last year as technical director at Portsmouth.

She initially stayed in Israel, where last year she appeared at a mental health charity event with her brother Amiram, to discuss how he had fallen ill with schizophrenia and announced that he was the Messiah.

When Roman Abramovich, the Russian billionaire owner of Chelsea, appointed her husband to the post of director of football last July, she moved to London with their son, Daniel, 13, and daughter, Rommi, 10.

Yesterday Chelsea seemed oblivious to the impending Tzofit effect. A source close to Abramovich said he had never met her and a team official said what the wife of a manager did was irrelevant to the club.

But Shaul Adar, an Israeli soccer writer, said: “She is very loud and attractive. She was the Ruby Wax of Israeli television.

“I was at one Israel game and she was the loudest person in the stadium.

“There were times when she couldn’t go to matches because the fans vented their anger towards her.

“But when Avram got it wrong she sometimes joined the fans, cursed him and shouted: ‘Make some substitutions now, you bastard’.”

— Additional reporting: Uzi Mahnaimi in Tel Aviv

Explore UK News

• Crime News

• Education News

• Health News

• Science News

• Scotland News

Times Recommends

• Sarah Brown and the ladies who tweet
• Open letter to a hero's daughters, from the daughter of a murdered officer
• Transplant drug extends life in mice