The tactician commented on what he sees as a tendency towards low-scoring games in modern football – and the potential effects in the impending World Cup. “The new trend in world football is simple: attack with six and defend with eight players”

Pre-empting any claim that Scolari was talking about a 14 or 15-man team, the Coach was referring to the fact that marking obligations tie down teams in a more sober strategy where weighting is placed on the rearguard rather than the spearhead.

“That’s one of the reasons that I really feel that this World Cup won’t exactly be the goalfest that some people are perhaps mistakenly looking forward to”, Felipão explained to German football magazine ‘Kicker’.

Scolari’s glowing gem of a conquest, the World Cup 2002, had a total of 161 goals in 64 games, averaging out at a respectable, yet hardly spectacular, two and a half goals per match. 2004 should have seen him follow it up with a Euro trophy, but Greece led Big Phil to second place sorrow.

He sees the 2006 Portugal as a stronger candidate towards success in Germany than the version seen in Portugal itself for the Euro 2004 tournament. “I believe that we’re now stronger than we were during the Euro 2004. We played through the classifying phase for Germany and that helped considerably” he went on to conclude “We’re now one of the top eight teams in the world.”

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