By Tim Vickery BBC Sport Online

Brazil's World Cup winning coach Luis Felipe Scolari says England were not only beaten by his side's brilliance in last June's World Cup quarter-final.

According to Big Phil, Sven Goran-Eriksson's men were also undone by the weather.

Brazil end England's dream

In his World Cup diary, the architect of Brazil's triumph admits that the outcome of the England game could have been different if the wind had been blowing in the opposite direction.

"We were a man down after Ronaldinho had been sent off," writes Scolari.

"England put us under an aerial bombardment. But they forgot that they had the wind behind them, and it took the ball towards the heads of our centre-backs, or straight through to our keeper Marcos.

"It made things much easier for our defenders, and more difficult for their strikers.

"If England had been playing into the wind it would have been horrible for us."

So after blowing his team to victory last June, where are the winds of fate likely to take Scolari now?

When he stepped down from the Brazil job he stressed his desire to take over a top European club early in the new year.

Scolari could bond with fellow Brazilians

"A club that hires me will become a big winner and if they're already a big winner then they will become even bigger," he said at the time.

Scolari does not suffer from a lack of self-esteem. But the European job would represent a new and fascinating challenge, where there is no guarantee of success.

Just as Brazilian players frequently have problems adapting to European football, so do Brazilian coaches.

Indeed, it might be the case that Scolari will find it particularly hard for make an impression across the Atlantic.

Brazil's ex-boss specialises in team building, in getting the group pulling in the same direction.

His World Cup diary is full of references to the motivational techniques designed to construct a feeling of unity.

He has undoubtedly done it extremely well - not just with the national team, but also with a succession of club sides.

Some of those clubs have contained the occasional foreigner - the Paraguayan Arce at Palmeiras and the Argentine Sorin at Cruzeiro.

But Scolari has worked his magic in an almost entirely Brazilian environment, where the players share a common culture.

That would certainly not be the case with a European club.

A random example of a top club, Deportivo La Coru�a, have players drawn from Yugoslavia, Brazil, Portugal, Morocco, Paraguay, Argentina, Holland and Uruguay, as well as Spain.

Can Scolari cope with players like Nouredinne Naybet?

Would Scolari's methods work so well with that lot?

So far, he has revelled in the role of father figure.

It is an obvious way of going about things in Brazil, which retains strong traces of an authoritarian society.

But it might not be such a hit with a cosmopolitan group, a fair few of whom are likely to be more culturally sophisticated than the bulk of Brazilian players.

Scolari would have to adapt, of course. And throughout his career, he has shown himself to be a pragmatist capable of taking the flexible route to victory.

But he would be unwise to count on having fortune's wind blowing in his direction once more.