‘There is only one objective for Brazil: to be champions’

Luiz Felipe Scolari has tasted glory and humiliating defeat with the Selecao. He tells Chris Evans about the challenges of competing as manager for the game’s greatest prize

- Chris Evans

Scolari had led Brazil to World Cup glory 12 years earlier when a team packed with stars including Ronaldo, Cafu and Ronaldinho beat the same opposition 2-0 to lift the famous gold trophy in Japan. But it’s the image of him standing on the edge of his technical area in Belo Horizonte that is more striking the captain of a sinking ship as Germany’s forwards blew a torrent across his team’s bows.

It’s a moment that must have played out in the former Brazil boss’s mind thousands of times. Thoughts of how he’d do things differently if he had his time again or so you’d think. Germany played a perfect game and we made mistakes one can’t make in a semi-final,” Scolari said in new book, How to Win the World Cup: Secrets and Insights from International Football’s Top Managers.

“If I had chance to play the match again, I wouldn’t change anything in terms of what we studied and the tactics we worked. We all know that game was one in 100 one in 1,000 maybe something absurd happened, so even if I could go back and change the team with information we had gathered from Germany, we’d do the same again.”

It’s a startling admission from a manager who was in charge of the greatest humiliation in Brazilian football history since the Maracanazo the Agony of the Maracana when the Selecao lost the de facto 1950 World Cup final against Uruguay in front on their own fans.

Scolari admits his side were stunned and scared” by Germany’s potency as they went 5-0 up within half an hour scoring four goals in six blistering minutes but says this was as much to do with Die Mannschaft’s brilliance as Brazil crumbling under unbearable pressure.