■ Germany’s precision proves too much,
Hosts can’t do anything right in lopsided loss
SAO PAULO — Maybe Brazil wasn’t that good to begin with. Or maybe Germany really is that much better.
Or, perhaps, the pressure on a young, inexperienced Brazilian team was simply too much to bear.
There were almost as many explanations for Brazil’s historic collapse in Tuesday’s World Cup semifinal as there were goals— and therewere a lot of those, with Germany winning 7-1 in Belo Horizonte in the most lopsided semifinal in tournament history.
Germany nowgoes on to the final, its second in four World Cups, where it will meet the winner of Wednesday’s semifinal between Argentina and the Netherlands.
When the whistle finally sounded Tuesday, stopping a game that had ended effectively an hour earlier, Brazilian captain David Luiz burst into tears. Others cried as well while one player dropped to his knees and buried his face in his hands.
And Brazilian coach Luiz Felipe Scolari? Well, he fell on his sword.
“It’s the worst moment of my career,” said Scolari, who coached Brazil to its last World Cup title in 2002. “Who is responsible for this? I am, it’s me. The blame for this catastrophic result can be shared between us all, but the person who decided the lineup, the tactics, was me.”
This was to be Brazil’s World Cup — had to be Brazil’s World Cup. And maybe that is what caused the team’s undoing.
It had been 64 years since Brazil staged — and lost — a World Cup at home. And in a country so passionate about the sport it is worshipped like a religion, even now that 1950 final is remembered as a national tragedy.
This year’s team, though, was expected to erase that stain.
Fans were seeking deliverance as much as they were a championship.
Ultimately, the pressure proved to be too much. During the team’s penaltykick victory over Chile to reach the quarterfinals, several Brazilian players burst into tears. Twice in the last week Scolari called on a psychologist to counsel the team.
Then came the injury to Neymar, the team’s talisman, who suffered a fractured vertebra in the quarterfinals, and the yellow-card suspension of captain Thiago Silva, the team’s best defender.
Germany, unbeaten in this World Cup and the top- ranked team still standing, had a golden opportunity.
ThomasMueller got the rout started in the 11th minute, scoring his fifth goal of this World Cup off ToniKroos’ bending corner kick. Mueller slipped his defender way too easily, then volleyed the cross out of the air and by Brazilian keeper Julio Cesar.
The parting of the Brazilian defense would prove to be a common theme — and things soon would get worse for the home team.
Two goals by Kroos and one each from Miroslav Klose and Sami Khedira in a six-minute span made it 5-0 Germany before the half-hour mark. The goal by Klose, whoscoredoff his own rebound, was his 16th in World Cup play, breaking the record he had shared with Brazilian legend Ronaldo.
By the timeKroos scored his second goal, Brazil was down 4-0 in a World Cup game for the first time in its history. And when Khedira made it 5-0 in the 29th minute the Germans, sensing this was now less a game then it was a massacre, stopped celebrating their goals.
In the stands Brazilian fans wept openly. By the halftime whistle many were heading out into a cool, dark night that would only get cooler and darker in the second half when Andre Schuerrle, a secondhalf substitute, scored twice to make it 7-0 — the most goals ever scored in a World Cup semifinal.
Oscar’s goal in the 90th minute got Brazil on the board but by then few still were paying attention. It had been an implosion of epic proportions, one that marked Brazil’s first loss in a competitive game at home in 40 years— though this gamewas anything but competitive.