Asian Champions League final is Luiz Felipe Scolari’s chance to heal World Cup wounds

His challenge against Al Ahli in the Asian Champions League final is to match what Marcello Lippi did two years ago, to win a major international trophy and show he has not lost his big-game knack, writes Ian Hawkey.

Guangzhou Evergrande's Brazilian coach Luis Felipe Scolari. AFP PHOTO / JOHANNES EISELE

The road out of Belo Horizonte was always going to be tough.

Luiz Felipe Scolari has achieved many great triumphs in his long career in management, but there is one match that even after close to quarter of a century as a coach, refuses to be buried, erased from automatic association with him.

Brazil 1, Germany 7.

‘Big Phil’ as he is known to his compatriots throughout the country with the most distinguished history in the international game, had never felt so belittled as at the end of that 2014 World Cup semi-final.

This weekend, one of the most thick-skinned warriors in a profession where a heavy suit of armour against criticism and disappointment is an essential part of the make-up, can make his most positive impression on the global game since that night, one of the most resonant defeats of modern sport.

Scolari’s status was never going to leave him without job offers after he oversaw the humiliating exit of Brazil, the host nation, at its own World Cup with that thrashing by the eventual champions, but he needed to choose them carefully if that game was not to be his epitaph.

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Belo Horizonte, on July 8th, 2014 was, Scolari said “the worst day of my life”. Football’s pressures can make coaches lose perspective, but in this instance, it sounded a sincere, gut-wrenching description of the sentiments of a man carrying the hopes of close to tens of millions of people.

At 5-0 down after half an hour, Brazil had defended like naifs and behaved about as proactively as rabbits caught in the headlights of the German juggernaut. The coach had to assume some responsibility. He and his team then sleepwalked into their next game, a 3-0 loss in the third-place play-off against Holland, by which time the abuse ringing in his ears was toxic.

Scolari’s story since Belo Horizonte has been mixed.

He was invited to take sanctuary with Gremio, the Brazilian club where he had been successful in the past and where they valued his earthy personality. That did not work out.

So 11 months after Belo Horizonte, he accepted the challenge of Guangzhou Evergrande, a job which comes with a handsome salary but also a high bar for a man with his history. His challenge against Al Ahli over the two legs of the Asian Champions League final is to match what Marcello Lippi did two years ago, to win a major international trophy and show he has not lost his big-game knack.

Comparisons with the Italian Lippi, a close contemporary of Scolari, are informative. Ambitious Guangzhou hired Lippi after his reputation had been damaged at a World Cup. He had led Italy to the title in 2006 but oversaw a first-round exit four years later.

Scolari’s finest achievement was to win the 2002 World Cup with Brazil. Like Lippi, he then went back for a regrettable second stint with his country, effectively terminated at Belo Horizonte.

Lippi won the Champions League, with Guangzhou. Scolari will feel he is obliged to copy that.

He once told this reporter he preferred club management to working with national teams – and he has coached Portugal, who he guided to second place at Euro 2004 – because there “I have time to help players improve”.

He has had scant time to do so with his Chinese club, but the team have got better under him, undefeated in the five-month era of Scolari.

He has Brazilian compatriots within the squad, men with whom in his short tenure he has established key alliances. “He has the ability to get very close to his players,” Juninho, the 2002 World Cup winner, told this reporter.

Nor, despite the often gruff demeanour, is it all stick and no carrot. “He can be very friendly, affectionate. He likes a joke just as much as he likes hard work.”

Scolari will not expect too much talk of redemption within Brazil if he adds an ACL title to his Copa Libertadores – he won the South American equivalent with Palmeiras – and to his 2002 World Cup gold medal. But he may feel he has put the worst night of his life, in Belo Horizonte 16 months ago, just that little bit further behind him.

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