BRAZIL HOLDS ITS BREATH
Pressure mounts with no Neymar
The photo dominated Saturday front pages everywhere across the land, from O Globo to Estado to Folha de Sao Paulo. The stricken young prince, face down, writhing on the grass, his dream, the one he shared with so many millions, shattered.
“Cowardice deprives the World Cup of Neymar!” bleated the Rio paper Extra.
“The Pain that Stopped Our Joy,” chimed in the Correio Braziliense.
Given where we are and who was involved, FIFA has vowed to launch a no-stone-unturned investigation into the challenge that fractured a vertebra on the 22-year-old prodigy.
Once-and-always king Pele went on his Twitter account to mourn the tragic fate of the latest in a lengthy line tipped to inherit his throne.
“It hurts our hearts,” he said, that Neymar can “no longer defend” Brazil at this World Cup.
In his column for The Guardian, Zico blamed FIFA’s lack of player protection for the injury.
Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff sent the ailing prodigy a public letter, addressed to “darling Neymar.”
“Your face of pain yesterday,” she wrote, “injured my heart and the heart of every Brazilian.”
The hero of a bygone era, Ronaldo, hinted darkly at wicked malice aforethought.
“The challenge was a very violent one,” the 2002 World Cup star claimed. “I believe there was an intention by the Colombian player to cause some harm.”
The grieving is not yet past. The hysteria, either.
Well, they’d better push through all the baggage, and quickly. An immensely efficient German side awaits on Tuesday. And even including a healthy Neymar in the starting 11, there was no guarantee Brazil would be able to summon enough to pass such a stern semifinal test in Belo Horizonte.
To be honest, watching endless replay and fully understanding that it’s an emotionally delicate issue hereabouts, the contact from Colombia’s Juan Zuniga appeared only slightly more than innocuous, despite Ronaldo’s wild claims of some form of diabolical attack. That was a challenge Brazilian hard man Marcelo might commit half a dozen times during a match. It just turned out wrong.
And while it’s undoubtedly true Neymar was targeted here, as Brazilian boss Big Phil Scolari has railed on about habitually, that’s only an occupational hazard befitting his status.
As Lionel Messi, James Rodriguez, Arjen Robben and others can surely attest.
The incident itself was frightening, after that initial thought of ‘get up!’ for a player so often going to ground rather easily.
“He said: ‘I can’t feel my legs,’ ” Scolari told the Marca paper. “Marcelo was scared and called the doctor but the doctor couldn’t get on in the confusion. It was a big shock, the image of Neymar being stretchered off to the helicopter, in difficulty, crying.”
There’s no doubt that the loss of this wonderful player is tragic, and not only for Brazilian aspirations. As we dive into World Cup semifinal time, everyone wants to see the best against the best. The special players are the ones able to lift often dull, tactical battles out of the mundane.
“I deeply regret the sad injury that Neymar suffered,” Zuniga, unfairly cast in the role of assassin, told the BBC. “Although I feel that these situations are a normal part of the game, there was no intent of injury, malice or negligence on my part.”
The loss of Neymar to this final push for the Hexa on home soil is incalculable. Scolari has no one at his disposal remotely capable of producing the same sort of decisive difference up front. Fred has been dreadful and Hulk still seeks his first goal here.
Adding to the gloom — and this should not be overlooked in the avalanche of Neymar angst — is that the Selecao will likely also be missing captain and centre back Thiago Silva. (Brazil is in the process of appealing the yellow card that netted Silva a one-match suspension).
In 1962, a 21-year-old Pele suffered a knee injury attempting a shot against Czechoslovakia, knocking him out of the tournament, and still Brazil gathered itself to win the World Cup in Chile. But that Brazil side had the sublime Garrincha, Zito, Amarildo, Didi, etc., to take up the slack.
This happens to be a far more workaday collection in canary yellow.
Under as much scrutiny as the men chosen by Scolari to fill in for his two best players Tuesday will be the officiating crew. There’s a tremendous, simmering feeling of injustice and resentment, being robbed of Neymar at this critical juncture of the tournament by what people view as lax officiating, and that can only heap more pressure on the on-pitch decision-makers.
There’s already been loud rumblings of favouritism toward the hosts, and those rumblings will turn into shrieks of “Fix! Fix!” should a couple of key calls conveniently go against Die Mannschaft on Tuesday.
Neymar, no different now than 62,000 in the Estadio Mineirao and millions across the globe, will be watching anxiously.
“I won’t be able to fulfil my dream of playing in a World Cup final,” he said, “but I’m sure they will win this one, they will become champions, I will be with them and all of Brazil will be celebrating together.”
Those odds are infinitely longer today than on Friday morning.