Second is last to a Brazilian

Luiz Phillipe Scolari looked like the man who'd found the winning lottery ticket in the pocket of the trousers he forgot to send to the cleaners.

He came to organise a Brazilian team which had sunk into chaos, which used 62 players in scraping through qualifying, which lost six games along the way.

He came to organise, to preach the romance of efficiency, but his team swashbuckled regardless and last night they beat the nation which invented footballing order.

Scolari is not a romantic man, but last night he was swooning and crooning.

"I feel happiness and joy, probably the same joy that the people of Brazil are feeling right now."

He came into this job preaching nothing more lovely than unity and order.

He felt a strong backdraft of criticism and sniping as the team left. There was a dread that Brazil would fail and be ugly in doing so.

He looks back and smiles. "Perhaps the best thing I did was putting Juninho in as an attacking midfielder at the start in order to have a group of strikers that would bring more goals and give us superiority.

"Because of that, we regained some of the old respect which we had lost in qualifying. Juninho, when he came in, forced opponents to respect us more."

He's a nuts and bolts man and while he talks of the mechanics of things you notice that his face has become young again. There's a weight lifted from his brain.

"Finishing second, for Brazil, is like finishing last. I tried to pass that feeling to the players. I told them to be consistent, play well and try to have fun.

"In order to do that we always knew that finishing second would be like coming last."

Scolari finishes by commenting that Germany had played, "as expected, powerfully and strong". The difference he says was the individual skill of the players.

And his counterpart arrives.

Rudi Voeller's hair was lank and wet. His face was ruddy and his eyes looked tired, but he wore a smile. His team had been derided, despised and denounced at various times over the past year. And that was just at home .

Yesterday, they had come close. "We've got to be happy with what we've achieved here in this World Cup. First, we survived our group matches, we played well at times but we owed a lot to Oliver Kahn who did some fantastic things."

His thoughts turn to the game which has just elapsed. He can hardly have expected it to be so rich with opportunity.

"We did very well, especially in the first half hour. We felt we had the game under control in the first 30 minutes. We made a few chances, but as the game went on we saw more and more of Brazil achieving what they are good at."

In summary, the defeat wasn't too hard a pill to swallow. Things have been worse in German football. Things have been worse for Rudi Voeller.

"We are proud of what we have achieved ourselves."

Thus the last words from any manager in this epic competition which began two years ago and ended last night with fireworks, embraces and the odd tear.