Brazil In Hell, Germany In Seventh Heaven
Updated: 9:59am UK, Wednesday 09 July 2014
By Paul Kelso, Sports Correspondent, Rio de Janeiro
Brazil's coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said winning this World Cup would take "seven steps to reach paradise".
In Belo Horizonte, at the sixth step, with the summit in sight, they tripped and fell. Who knows when they will land.
The scale of their defeat to Germany was so shocking it needs spelling out. Seven-one is a Sunday morning scoreline, not one to be inked into the record books of football's greatest tournament.
For a team that has traded so deliberately on faith and emotion, this was a descent into hell. Judging by the public mood in the immediate aftermath, Brazilians may demand a long stay in purgatory before they can think of moving on.
It represents a deep humiliation for the five-times champions. It is their worst ever World Cup defeat and their heaviest since a 6-0 loss to Uruguay in 1920.
In the litany of national sporting disasters it ranks alongside the 3-0 defeat to France in the 1998 World Cup final, and more painfully the 1950 loss to Uruguay in the Maracana.
That loss earned an epithet, "Maracanaza", a shorthand for national shame. This tournament was meant to offer redemption for the sins of the last century. Instead, Brazil now has a "Mineiraozo", a fresh catastrophe to make Brazilian's shudder whenever the stadium in Belo Horizonte is mentioned.
If you think that sounds dramatic consider the headlines. "Shame of shames" said Globo's website. Lance! went for "The biggest shame in history".
To their credit - about the only thing that was on a traumatic night - Scolari and his players did not duck responsibility. Captain David Luiz, the poster boy for a derelict defensive display - only stopped crying long enough to apologise. And the coach, plain "Felipao" to the nation in happier times 24 hours earlier, accepted all responsibility.
And so he should. His attacking selection, featuring just two holding midfield players, was fatally exposed as reckless by a German side who outnumbered their opponents and then destroyed them.
Scolari's deeply melodramatic approach must also be questioned. They tried every emotional trick in the book, even holding up the missing Neymar's No 10 shirt during the national anthem to stir the stadium to its foundations.
But what Brazil needed in the face of a dazzling German display was clear heads, not misty eyes. Perhaps as a result, having conceded a dreadful opening goal to Thomas Muller, they froze, like perhaps no team before them in international football. Four more goals followed in six minutes, five in 19 minutes in total, and with not even half an hour played.
So good were Germany, and so complete was Brazil's loss of poise, it could have been 10.
The impact of Brazil's loss is compelling, but it should not detract from the German achievement here.
This is a side that has reached the semi-final in each of the last four major tournaments, and has only been denied a title by the brilliant Spanish side that gave up its world crown here.
They possess a wonderfully talented generation of players who combine a fluid, modern style with the focus and resilience of their forebears. They are a delight to watch, a surprise apparently even to themselves at times, and would be worthy winners of a dazzling World Cup.
Only a Dutch side marshalled by the formidable Louis Van Gaal or a Messi-inspired Argentina stand in their way. On this form, neither will be enough to stop Germany completing the seventh step to heaven.
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