Scolari salutes Brazil spirit

Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari today praised the spirit in his squad for taking Brazil to their fifth World Cup.

Ronaldo scored twice to give Brazil a 2-0 win over Germany and also earn the Golden Shoe as the tournament’s leading scorer with eight goals, a tally which also takes him level with Pele’s Brazil World Cup record of 12.

It was the final touch to Ronaldo’s resurrection after he had suffered convulsions before the final in France 98, a match Brazil lost 3-0.

‘‘To be second in Brazil is being last,’’ said an emotional Scolari, brought near to tears by the joy of the moment. ‘‘To be second is to be a loser. I love the moment of being first. The feeling is marvellous.

‘‘I feel happiness and joy that we have done our job. It has been a long time and full of hard work but now we can feel the merit. It is a historic moment, Brazil are back as world champions.

‘‘The secret is the union of the boys, the way they have given everything. They have had one objective, one spirit and they have felt a positive energy.’’

Scolari picked out the introduction to the midfield of former Middlesbrough star Juninho as the catalyst which turned around Brazil’s poor qualifying form, in which they lost six out of 18 matches.

Juninho came on in the second-half for Ronaldinho in the final and Scolari said: ‘‘Putting Juninho in the team gave us a line to our strikers and superiority over our opponents. We could impose our will on teams with Juninho there. Our opponents respected us.

‘‘The defence have been criticised but they are not that bad. In fact, we have maybe the best defence in the world. They are all good on the ball and have great technical skills.’’

He added, with tears welling in his eyes: ‘‘We have been touched by the people of Brazil and their support. I miss my family and my son but we are five-times world champions.’’

Meanwhile German coach Rudi Voeller admitted Brazil were worthy world champions, while singling out goalkeeper Oliver Kahn, who spilled the shot which allowed Ronaldo to nip in and score the first goal, for special praise.

‘‘We’ve got to be happy to get as far as we did with the number of injuries we have had. We played well at times but we owed a lot to Oliver Kahn,’’ said Voeller.

‘‘We did well in the first half hour today and had the game under control but as the game went on Brazil showed their individual class. They are so strong in one on one situations with their quick passing and they created a lot of difficulties for us.

‘‘We didn’t manage to get that first vital goal but Brazil are a wonderful team.

‘‘They are very strong going forward. They deserve to be world champions.’’