Scolari hails 'outstanding' Neymar after Portugal win

Sep 11, 2013 10:28:00 AM

The 64-year-old was delighted with the attacker's display, while Paulo Bento was not impressed with his side's performance

Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has praised Neymar in the wake of the Selecao's 3-1 international friendly win over Portugal on Tuesday.

Raul Meireles gave Portugal an early lead but Neymar then stepped up as the 21-year-old set up Thiago Silva for the equaliser before making it 2-1 after a superb individual goal.

"Neymar was very good, outstanding," Scolari stated at the post-match press conference.

"He has been playing well for three or four years now. Once in every 15 or 20 games or so he does not play at his usual level and his performance is a little bit less than normal.

"However, Neymar usually acts at the level he showed against Portugal."

The Brazil boss then went on to say that he has not made a final decision about his squad for the World Cup just yet.

"There are a bunch of details that will probably make me change the way I am thinking about one player or another through injury or something else like it.

"Between the game against Australia and the match versus Portugal, I saw that I can add one or two more players to that group of 17 or 18 players that I already had. We will possibly introduce more new players to evaluate."

Portugal boss Paulo Bento, meanwhile, was not impressed with his side's performance and feels they will have to do better in their remaining World Cup qualifiers if they want to make it to next year's tournament.

"We were not as good as we normally are. We played badly. We hope that this will not affect us ahead of the game against Israel.

"We will only know in October if this was the best thing that could happen to us. We had not lost a game since February and our game against Ecuador. We had since played some very good games, both in official games and in friendlies. We will have to see in the future."

Portugal currently sit second in Group F with 17 points from eight games, trailing leaders Russia by one point.