Brazil’s Massacre: Post Match and Postmortem Report

Last night was so full of falling stars in foot­ball that it seemed to be a dream or fan­ta­sy and cer­tain­ly a night­mare for many. Brazil­ian team, which was pre­dict­ed to win against Ger­many by many includ­ing myself, exhib­it­ed the most unbe­liev­ably ter­ri­ble, shock­ing and unrea­son­able sights of foot­ball. Scolari’s over ambi­tious and over-con­fi­dent team saw what could be labelled as the most dis­ap­point­ing loss of World Cup’s his­to­ry of lat­er stages in the wake of their pur­suit for anoth­er place in the finals.

There were a lot of fac­tors in the build-up of this semi-final which had dared the Brazil­ians fans to hope for their team to out­per­form Ger­many in this match. The injury of Ney­mar had reju­ve­nat­ed an even big­ger fire and pas­sion to suc­ceed in the cup. Anoth­er huge fact was the hunger and des­per­a­tion of win­ning the world cup at their own soil in front of their fans. Fur­ther­more, Brazil had also man­aged to jot up a team that was very tal­ent­ed and had the knack to take them to the finals espe­cial­ly with the home advan­tage.

Even before the World Cup had begun, Sco­lari had made a clear-cut claim that Brazil would be the cham­pi­on of this World Cup. With the recent devel­op­ments of Brazil in the tour­na­ment, Sco­lari had once again expressed that Brazil already has one of their hands on the tro­phy. How­ev­er, in the post com­ments of the match, he had some­thing dif­fer­ent to say this time.

He said, “Today was the worst day of my life — but life goes on. My mes­sage for the Brazil­ian peo­ple and fans is that we tried to do what we could do, our best, ver­sus a great team. They fin­ished off the match in three or four min­utes with some fan­tas­tic goals… But we are going to con­tin­ue work­ing hard to keep improv­ing. I’m sor­ry we could not reach our goal. The fans sup­port­ed us even when it was five, six, or sev­en down to Ger­many. I am respon­si­ble for this cat­a­stroph­ic result. I made the choic­es. I was respon­si­ble. We ask for for­give­ness. To the peo­ple, please excuse us for this neg­a­tive mis­take.”

He fur­ther added “What hap­pened today had lit­tle to do with how we had been play­ing. We lost con­trol… that’s not nor­mal but it hap­pens. It was one goal after the oth­er. It was like we blanked out. We tried to talk to them, to orga­nize them. There was noth­ing we could do. A coach makes choic­es and has to deal with con­se­quences. I don’t have any regrets for the choic­es I made. Try­ing to turn around a 5–0 after the first half is impos­si­ble. They (the Ger­man team) had their best match today. Us? Our worst!”
Sco­lari also went on to prove the point­less claims of many peo­ple wrong who thought that the absence of Ney­mar was the rea­son behind the humil­i­a­tion of Brazil.

Sco­lari said “No, no, no. Let’s not try to find an excuse in Ney­mar or the emo­tions of the anthem. I don’t think it would have been dif­fer­ent with Ney­mar. He’s a strik­er. Ger­many prob­a­bly could have done that with Ney­mar in the side, also. He would­n’t have known how to defend those moves for the sec­ond, third, fourth and fifth goals.”

How­ev­er, there is no doubt that the absence of Thi­a­go Sil­va has hurt Brazil the most in this match. Not only did it show how vul­ner­a­ble Brazil’s defense is with­out him but it also proved how flaw­less and wor­thy a play­er their tal­is­man­ic cap­tain is. When Jose Mour­in­ho said that it’s not Ney­mar, but Thi­a­go Sil­va that Brazil will miss the most, peo­ple like Gaiz­ka Mendi­eta ques­tioned his com­ments and rein­forced his opin­ion that Brazil will indeed miss Ney­mar the most. But once again, Jose Mour­in­ho was spot on as the Brazil­ian defense looked to be con­sist­ed of some school boys defend­ing for their nation with Sil­va.

Apart from the absence of Sil­va, it was the coach Luiz Felipe Sco­lari who got it all wrong and he admit­ted doing so. His tac­tics from the start were care­less and tac­ti­cal­ly inept. He sim­ply took the wrong per­son­nel with him to play against Ger­many. It was not less than a stu­pid­i­ty to employ Defen­sive Mid­field­ers and Cen­tre Mid­field­ers out wide and hav­ing no tac­ti­cal mid­field­er to hold the shape and hav­ing no num­ber 10 to cre­ate and pro­vide. Had Ramires and Paulin­ho been deployed in the very cen­ter of the ground with Oscar in piv­ot and Willian on the wings with Hulk, the face and sto­ry of the match could real­is­ti­cal­ly have been dif­fer­ent. Anoth­er mis­take Sco­lari com­mit­ted was not select­ing peo­ple like Coutin­ho, Lucas Moura and Pato in his squad. They are all phe­nom­e­nal play­ers and could have def­i­nite­ly been use­ful, espe­cial­ly after the injury of Ney­mar. Fur­ther­more, Fer­nand­in­ho, Marcelo,David Luiz, Bernard and Hulk were so bad on the pitch that they seemed like a few head­less chick­ens run­ning with­out a clue in the ground.

On the oth­er hand, Ger­many played the most splen­did foot­ball one can see. They were bril­liant in defend­ing, dev­as­tat­ing on the counter and had some glo­ri­ous pass­es going on in the game.
There’s a famous sto­ry about the career of Alfre­do Di Ste­fano, the Argen­tine leg­end who sad­ly passed away this week. Dur­ing 1940’s, the Riv­er Plate side of Di Ste­fano was so dom­i­nant that they employed a sport­ing tac­tic known as ‘Five and dance’ where this team would play exhi­bi­tion foot­ball after hav­ing attained a five goal lead and not attempt to score anoth­er goal until their oppo­si­tions scored one.

It could have been a per­fect trib­ute to De Ste­fano had Ger­many start­ed to toy with Brazil after scor­ing 5–0 in the first half, but that was nev­er the case, as the Ger­mans went on to humil­i­ate Brazil fur­ther by adding two more to their already impres­sive score-line. The Ger­mans were extreme­ly immense in their game, espe­cial­ly Neuer, Kroos, Muller, Schur­rle and Khedi­ra and they have indu­bitably proven a point to be the favourites for lift­ing the Word Cup 2014.

Anoth­er high­light of the match that was over­shad­owed by the Brazil’s hor­ren­dous per­for­mance was the goal of Klose that broke the record for the most goals scored at the world cup finals with 16 goals on his name now.

Fol­low­ing are some more stats that need to be high­light­ed:
• The biggest defeat of Brazil in World Cup his­to­ry
• Brazil’s worst ever defeat at home
• The biggest World Cup semi-final defeat of all time
• Since 1938, it is the first time when Brazil have lost a World Cup semi-final

Some thoughts on the Argenti­na vs Nether­land Semi­fi­nal:
Both these teams are play­ing fan­tas­tic foot­ball in the tour­na­ment; how­ev­er it is only Argenti­na who comes close to match­ing the Ger­man team for indi­vid­ual qual­i­ty.
Louis Van Gaal’s men would be very much aware of Mes­si in the match and I won’t be sur­prised if they employ De Jong just to mark Mes­si in the game. Van Gaal has been very well and spot on in his tac­tics and he will def­i­nite­ly be look­ing to extract anoth­er tac­ti­cal genius win out of this match. How­ev­er the qual­i­ty and strength of Argenti­na can prove to be too good for Robben, Van Per­sie and Co.
The absence of Angel Di Maria will def­i­nite­ly be felt but they have more than enough tal­ent to cov­er for him and give a great con­test to Nether­land.

Pre­dic­tion: This match cer­tain­ly does not look to be one sided as the oth­er semi-final in this World cup and it will cer­tain­ly offer more com­pet­i­tive­ness. How­ev­er, I pre­dict Argenti­na to win this match 3–2.