SOURCES at the Portuguese Football Federation last night confirmed that they had held crisis talks yesterday to discuss Luiz Felipe Scolari’s likely defection to England amid outrage from Portuguese football fans and media commentators.

While anger was directed primarily at Scolari, Portugal’s team manager, a day after he met FA officials to talk terms that would take him to England after the World Cup this summer, the PFP also came in for criticism.

Officials met their manager at the Hotel Amazonia, which neighbours the National Stadium in the Jamor district of Lisbon. A source said: “No one is going to say anything. There are a lot of hurt feelings. This is a very destabilising moment for our team, not what you would want in the months leading up to a World Cup.” Asked if the talks with Scolari had been crisis talks, the official said: “I can’t use that word but others may well feel free to do so.”

Alberto da Silva, one of Portugal’s most respected football commentators, at A Bola newspaper, said: “The Portuguese federation gave Scolari the green light to speak to the English, so they are to blame for this. The problem is that should Portugal meet England in Germany our manager will be compromised. The Portuguese people, who love their football, deserve better. This decision should and could have waited until after the World Cup.”

Even as Scolari eschewed journalists and national football officials maintained that their gentlemen’s agreement that he would think about his future only after the World Cup was over was still in place, internet forums brimmed with messages alleging treachery.

Scolari spent yesterday morning trying to ensure the match fitness of one national squad member, Costinha, by placing him with a Portuguese team. Costinha, who is contracted to Dynamo Moscow but has not played for months because of a dispute with his manager, trained with mid-table Belenenses at their stadium in the Lisbon suburbs on Thursday, thanks largely to Scolari’s good offices.

Scolari left halfway through the training session and headed for the Portuguese federation’s technical department, which serves as the national squad’s headquarters, before lunching with his closest aides at a nearby hotel. Afterwards, the stony-faced manager stormed past waiting journalists into the squad offices, telling them: “Youre wasting your time.” He left just an hour later.

Portugal fans were a little more forthcoming. “This is a disgrace,” one contributor to the internet forum of sports newspaper Record said. “These English do everything they can to destabilise our squad,” another wrote.

There was no reply at the luxury apartment in the Quinta das Pataias district of Cascais overlooking the Atlantic sea that Scolari shares with his wife, Olga, 55, and their two sons, aged 21 and 14. The curtains were closed and the bars at the windows bolted.

A neighbour asked what our business was and laughed when given the answer. “He’s a down-to-earth man you know. It’s a down-to-earth family.” A gardener sprinkling water on Aloe Vera said: “You won’t find anyone home. They’re at dinner in Lisbon tonight and Señor Scolari is leaving to go abroad tomorrow.”

Scolari was indeed to be found in town, the principal guest on a twice-monthly radio show called Dinner at Aviz organised by the TSF station and Diario de Noticias newspaper. A source close to the show said: “Normally this is a pretty mild affair, but the whole nation will be watching tonight to see if he flinches. There’s a lot of anger about this. Scolari has talked a lot about how he doesn’t value money as highly as the love of the Portuguese people. He appears to have changed his mind.”

• Additional reporting by Alison Roberts Five phrases that Luiz Felipe Scolari may find useful

  Doente que nem um papagaio

  Sick as a parrot

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