It’s been a whole day since semi-final number one finished and, like pretty much everyone I guess, I still struggle with what happened this morning.
Brazil 1. Germany 7.
In the Semi-Final of the World Cup. In Brazil. In a day and age where no-one gets hammered like that.
Brazil hadn’t lost a competitive match at home since 1975 apparently. That’s nearly a life time. Nearly my lifetime!
All sorts of crazy stats have come out after the match. That’s how monumental this result was. It was like no other game of football. Ever.
We can’t put this in a New Zealand context because such a thing doesn’t exist. Kiwi sports fans cannot comprehend it because we don’t even remotely care about any of our sports teams as much. No, not even the All Blacks. Not by a long, long way.
Australian football commentator Craig Foster has probably put it best in several recent tweets: “Impossible for us to know how Brazil feels. Consider: roll ALL our sports into 1; increase population by factor 5; give us 5 World Cups; Make our national identity largely predicated on football; all our sport heroes footballers; then host Cup only 2nd time, prepare for years THEN view Cup as opportunity to erase black mark of Maracanazo, 1950, as redemption. Glorious possibilities.. then receive sete, at home!”
Indeed.
Klose couldn’t have picked any better stage to break Ronaldo’s World Cup goal scoring record. Against Ronaldo’s Brazil. With Ronaldo in the stands commentating. That’s how utterly ruthless the performance was. It was as if the statue of Christ the Redeemer donned lederhosen and slowly raised a giant rocky finger in the face of all Brazil.
What happened? Plenty of other people have had an opinion on various blogs and football news sites. I don’t think I can add anything original. To be honest, I’m not sure I want to. Like probably several billion people around the world I’m just so glad I can say I got to witness what will probably come to be the most famous result in football history.
No-one remembers the score of semi-finals. We will remember this one.
Maybe if the Brazilian players had spent more time worrying about themselves rather than Neymar then they might have had a chance. I guess a result like that adds to the Neymar legend and, dare I say it, brand because he wasn’t there. The man himself is probably quite pleased he broke his back because it meant he wasn’t a part of it. Not that a striker could have helped his woefully inadequate defenders defend.
The funniest thing (well, one of the funniest things…there were a few) I saw today was a picture of Facebook showing a couple of guys rummaging through a dumpster with the caption: “PSG owners searching for David Luiz’s receipt.” That move, which reportedly cost PSG 50 million Euros (or pounds depending on what figures you believe) is not looking too great right about now. It wasn’t before at that price, but now…
Is there any way we can top that? I doubt it. I expect tomorrow’s match will be embarrassingly calm by comparison.
Pick for Day 28
Netherlands 2-1 Argentina. Argentina will miss Di Maria more that the Dutch will miss Van Persie (if he’s still sick) so I’ll get my Brazil v Argentina match, but it will be for 3rd place in Brasilia.