Scolari says future yet to be decided after loss

By Iain Rogers

BRASILIA (Reuters) - Brazil manager Luiz Felipe Scolari said his future had yet to be decided and urged optimism after the hosts crashed to another heavy defeat in their final match of the World Cup on Saturday.

Brazil were soundly beaten 3-0 by the Netherlands to finish a disappointing fourth and Scolari said he would file a report to the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) as planned and leave it up to them to decide his fate.

"That has to be decided by the president of the confederation," Scolari told a news conference when asked about his future.

"When we started we had a deadline to make our jobs available at the end of the World Cup regardless of the result," added the 65-year-old.

"And that is exactly what we’re going to do with a final report for the president.

"Now we have to prepare our report and tell the president what happened and allow him to analyse this and life goes on."

The president-elect of the CBF, Marco Polo Del Nero, said on Friday that Scolari should keep his job because of the good work he did during his 19 months in charge.

Scolari said he had no reason to criticise his players after Saturday's performance in the third-place playoff match and there was no need for them to be mentally scarred by their experiences over the past week.

Anything other than a sixth World Cup crown, and a first on home soil, was always going to be a failure but the way Brazil capitulated to the Germans in the semi-final was truly shocking and their defence again performed woefully on Saturday.

"Losing 7-1 (to Germany) we have already spoken about this many times," Scolari told reporters. "It was the worst in history I know that but we have to see the positive things.

"This generation is also going to be seen as the generation that started preparations for 2018 as one of the top four teams in the world.

"What am I feeling? I am feeling sad but I tell the fans that any leader ,or any person leading a group or nation, if they don’t convey optimism then there’s nothing we can do.

"We have to push the team forward we have to be optimistic, that’s what we have to do if we want to make it."

TOTALLY DEFLATED

After another poor display, the Brazil players again had to say sorry to the home supporters.

"We need to apologise to the fans, they booed us at the end, which is normal, they have feelings too. It's very tough," captain Thiago Silva said in a television interview.

"After the 7-1 today’s game was very difficult psychologically," he added. "But we need to look at what we did wrong so we don’t make the same mistakes again.

"You need to be calm at moments like this. We know that not everything we do is wrong. We were knocked out and that leaves us frustrated and sad but I think that life goes on."

However, midfielder Oscar appeared totally deflated.

"What can you say. We came here hoping to win third place but we didn't, it wasn't our day,” he said.

"We lost, there’s nothing to say. We lost a goal in two, three minutes and we were chasing the game.

"We are all very sad, the people are very sad, but we tried and we tried till the end."

Robin van Persie got the first Dutch goal from the penalty spot in the third minute, Daley Blind added a second 13 minutes later and Georginio Wijnaldum wrapped up the victory with a third in stoppage time.

(Reporting by Andrew Downie, editing by Nigel Hunt and Ken Ferris)