Germany and Portugal offered a great game and both coaches (at their last games as the teams’ respective coaches) aknowledged it.

Jurgen KLINSMANN (GER)
It’s impossible to put into words what happened here this evening. You can’t top that. The fans were fantastic, and the team played like men possessed. I’m so incredibly proud that the team managed to put in such an excellent performance. We’re going to celebrate this all night long. Afterwards, I’ll need a few days to let all this sink in and fully comprehend the extent of what we managed to achieve.

It was an entertaining game, and both teams had their chances. The way Bastian Schweinsteiger turned the whole game with those three shots is the kind of amazing thing that can only happen in football. After the match, Franz Beckenbauer came up to me and said “you have to carry on”. I told him that “we’ll see”. As a young coach, it really is special to receive praise from greats of the game like Beckenbauer, Eusebio and Luiz Felipe Scolari.

So many things have happened to us, and we could never have imagined things panning out the way they did. I need a few days to myself now. I’m overwhelmed, I’m happy, and I can hardly come to terms with it all. The lads played so well over the past four weeks.

Over the last two years, I have built up a relationship with this particular generation of players. Everyone of us has made progress in our respective fields, and I’ve also established a friendship with everyone of them.

Luiz Felipe SCOLARI (POR)
My team didn’t do much wrong today. Germany were very effective, particularly with their long-range efforts, and there wasn’t much we could do about that. There was nothing to choose between the teams in the first half, but in the second, we let two goals in one after the other, the first from a swerving shot and the second when Petit deflected a free-kick. Germany’s third goal was a beauty though. We had chances ourselves, but we just couldn’t put them away.

I’m not unhappy with what the team has achieved. We’ve been together for 52 days now and during this time, we’ve grown as a group. Over the past three years, the team has come on in leaps and bounds. Tonight’s game was great, and the fans were just as good – they showed a lot of respect for the Portuguese team. That’s what makes a World Cup a success or not, and that was something that really impressed me. I was also really pleased to see how Jurgen Klinsmann’s stock has risen in Germany. I’m one of his greatest admirers.

As far as my future is concerned, I’m not going to comment at the moment. I’m going to have to give it some thought, and then we’ll see what happens. We ended up one of the four best teams in the world, but despite that, we’re on our way home after a defeat, and that’s a shame.

Source: WCoffsite