'You can judge my legacy'

Brazil coach Tite said that it was very painful for him to turn up and talk to reporters after that heart-stopping defeat against Belgium in the quarterfinal at Kazan Arena on Friday. But he refused to attribute the 2-1 loss to luck.

The Professor also said that it was a great advertisement for the beautiful game.

“With all the pain I'm feeling right now and all the bitterness and all the difficulty coming here and talking to you, I want to say if you like football you will have to watch this game. You are going to treasure it if you are not emotionally involved. You can sit back and enjoy the beautiful game --opportunities here and there, finishes, the goalkeeping, looking for quality, options, transitions -- what a beautiful game -- it pains me to say,” the Brazil coach said with an air of authority.

He rebuked questions about whether luck or lack thereof had anything to do with Brazil's defeat against Belgium in a game where they created a lot of opportunities.

“I don't want to talk about luck. Football has some random aspects and luck is one of them. But I don't want to talk about luck. Luck is a way of putting down somebody's skills. They were efficient they managed to finish. Two-thirds of the match we had wrapped around in our fingers and it's a top level match but in terms of effectiveness Belgium transformed those into goals. They were superior in terms of effectiveness on the pitch," The Professor observed.

He also refused talk about the future, saying that "it is not appropriate at this moment of lot of excitement."

Although Kevin De Brune was adjudged play of the match, Tite believed it was Courtois, the tall Belgium goalkeeper who made a number of saves in the pulsating contest. He was also against talking about the refereeing and only suggested that he would have appreciated had Gabriel Jesus's incident was referred to VAR.

He also got into the details of the game where Brazil had 28 shots on target -- 17 blocked 10 on target.

Tite was against talking about individual players and did not even consider Casemiro's absence as a blow to the balance of the team.

“In this match we kept creating chances. It's a feeling, not specifically the numbers but the whole work to assess what we have done. I'm proud of it."

Tite wanted his legacy to be judged by others.

“The legacy I leave is up to you really. If I say it's a good legacy -- you will say he is sort of  -- look time will tell. Right now, it's the excitement of the game and after two weeks the dust settled -- you can have the time to assess it better.”

He also left it to the fans to judge his short stint.

“The fans know what happened on the pitch. It transcends the result of the match, they can see. Maybe because of that they recognized that and that's why they can still be loving fans," Tite said, adding that it was not the physical aspect that was the determining factor.

“The team was flying with transition and speed, high-medium and low they were flying [until they collapsed at Kazan].”