Brazil's coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has described Brazil's humiliation against Germany as "the worst day of my life" and pleaded publicly with the fans of the World Cup's host nation to "please excuse us", UK-based the daily Telegraph reports.
With a third-place play-off still to contemplate on Saturday, Scolari refused to say whether he would continue as manager beyond this tournament but said that it had been the "most catastrophic" defeat in Brazil's history. He also said that he was fully culpable for the 7-1 humiliation.
"Who is responsible when the team plays?" Scolari said. "I am. It's me. Who decided the tactics, I did. So the person responsible is me. If I were to think of my life as a player, as a coach, as a teacher, this was the worst day of my life. I'll be remembered probably because I lost 7-1, the worst defeat Brazil have ever had."
Scolari was also adamant that the result would not have been different with Neymar in the team, or that all the emotion surrounding the loss of his best player, had impacted on his team. "We lost a match to a great team," he said. "Even they were saying: 'We don't know how this happened.' We panicked and things started to happen normally for them.
"I don't have any regrets with the choices I made. They probably could have done that with Neymar in the side, also. He wouldn't have known how to defend those moves for the second, third, fourth and fifth goals. Let's not try to find an excuse in Neymar or the emotions. What happened was Germany imposed a fantastic rhythm on the game."