Brazil vs Germany: Not Just A Semi-Final

This semi-final match in the FIFA World Cup 2014 is noth­ing less than a final as the best and most con­sis­tent teams through­out the tour­na­ment are all set to go into a bat­tle. It is extreme­ly inter­est­ing that both Ger­many and Brazil have played 24 semi-finals in the world cup so far, but this will be only their sec­ond meet­ing after the 2002 final.

The total encoun­ters between the two giants have been 21, out of which Brazil has won 12 and Ger­many has won only 4 while the remain­ing 5 match­es were drawn.

Ger­many has played 500 more suc­cess­ful pass­es than any oth­er team in the tour­na­ment. Brazil is con­sid­ered tech­ni­cal­ly the sound­est team. On the oth­er hand, hav­ing won against a very strong team of France in the quar­ter finals, the con­fi­dence and morale of Ger­many would be sky high.

Brazil would be absolute­ly des­per­ate to win at any cost. Regard­less of their high­ly dec­o­rat­ed tro­phy cab­i­nets, all that mat­ters for the host nation is to win the world cup at their own soil.

The play­ers of Brazil made 31 fouls in their quar­ter-final match against Colom­bia and in par­tic­u­lar against James Rodriguez, who hap­pens to be the star play­er for Colom­bia. It is the high­est num­ber of fouls any team has com­mit­ted in this world cup so far. It seems that Scolari’s men are over-enthused in their pur­suit of a world cup vic­to­ry at their home­land.

In addi­tion, Bas­t­ian Schwe­in­steiger has also accused Brazil of “tack­ling beyond the lim­its”. He said “I’m all for a healthy hard­ness, but some of Brazil’s fouls were over the lim­it. Brazil­ians are not only foot­ball magi­cians, hard tack­ling is part of their game. We have to be care­ful and so does the ref­er­ee.”

Fur­ther­more, Brazil also com­mit­ted 28 fouls against Chile in the pre­vi­ous round and Brazil’s gold­en boy Ney­mar insist­ed that he had no prob­lem in win­ning ugly before play­ing Colom­bia. How­ev­er the most ugly and high­light­ed sight of the tour­na­ment was when Ney­mar had a ter­ri­ble knock at his back and was tak­en off the field with a bro­ken ver­te­brae in the dying min­utes of the match. More­over, the cap­tain and star defend­er Thi­a­go Sil­va is also banned from the Semi Final clash.

Regard­ing his ban, Thi­a­go Sil­va said, “The yel­low card has tak­en me out of the semi-final, but I know who­ev­er comes into my place is well equipped to fill my boots.” He fur­ther added “It was a sil­ly thing. I was run­ning back and he put the ball in front of me – there wasn’t real­ly much else I could have done.”

Dante is like­ly to come in Silva’s place in cen­tral defense, as the Bay­ern Munich’s defend­er remains to be the most expe­ri­enced option avail­able on the Brazil­ian bench.

Pre­dict­ed Line Ups:

Talk­ing points:

Brazil:
The absence of Thi­a­go Sil­va will hurt Brazil the most as they might become vul­ner­a­ble in his absence. Dante as a replace­ment sounds con­vinc­ing, but his lack of under­stand­ing with Cesar and Luiz may just cause a prob­lem in a match as impor­tant as this.

The oth­er most talked about point will def­i­nite­ly be the absence of Ney­mar, but Oscar and Willian have the capa­bil­i­ty of weav­ing some mag­ic into the team and not let the absence of Ney­mar be felt to a lot of extent. Brazil as a team looked a bit rusty in com­par­i­son to Ger­many. How­ev­er, the pas­sion, des­per­a­tion, espe­cial­ly after the injury of Ney­mar, this team of Brazil is cer­tain­ly more than capa­ble of doing won­ders.

Ger­many:
The strength of Ger­many lies in the per­fect team­work, they have all the weapons to com­bine a per­fect attack on the counter, while they have a top defense and arguably the best goal­keep­er left in the tour­na­ment. As a team, Ger­many is extreme­ly dis­ci­plined, con­sis­tent and skill­ful. With the likes of Özil, Kroos, Müller and their water­proof defense, it cer­tain­ly can defeat any team in the world. It remains to be seen whether Gotze will get a start in this match or not, but nonethe­less, he is the kind of play­er who can cause an effect in the match even if he comes on as a sub­sti­tute.

Pre­dic­tion:
Tech­ni­cal­ly, there is no doubt that Ger­many looks to be a bet­ter team and has the most chances to pre­vail. How­ev­er, the pas­sion, obses­sion and com­mit­ment Brazil has got, espe­cial­ly after the injury of Ney­mar, they will cer­tain­ly do any­thing to win this cup on their soil.

We pre­dict Brazil to win this match in extra time with a 2–1 score­line.