FIFA World Cup 2014: The day Brazil stood still

Brazil national side fail to live up to the expectations of the home fans as Germany thrash them 7-1 in the semi-final.

This past Tuesday in Belo Horizonte, time seemed to stand still during the 90 minutes of football in the first semi-final between Brazil and Germany.

For 90 minutes, all those who watched went through emotions that you would associate more with being at the cinemas and amphitheatres. For 90 minutes, people’s thoughts were suspended, for from the outside looking in, it bore no evidence of a sporting contest, least of all a FIFA World Cup semi-final between two giants of the game.

While the rain came down hard as the match wore on, the tears came down harder on the cheeks of many Brazilian supporters in the stadium who just found it all a little too much to stomach. Overwhelmed they were and awash with misery at watching their heroes fall apart like a deck of cards.

As the first goal went in, when Thomas Müller found himself completely unmarked to head home, the entire Brazilian team took a deep breath knowing that they now had to put up a masterful effort to come back in this one without their two best players. Hope, while having taken a hit, was still intact. When the second one went in, and in the manner in which it did, that hope was shattered. The young team out on the pitch began to see its World Cup dream slip away.

And in thinking about that dream slipping away, they let in a third, fourth and fifth. In a span of six extremely long minutes, Brazil’s players suddenly found their dream turned into a nightmare, a real live one, and one in which they were very much awake. Their thoughts must have shifted to the vultures that would circle around them after the match, the memories that would haunt them for years on end and a public that would be merciless and unforgiving during their entire lifetime for having brought on this shame to the country’s football and its people.

It was the day Brazil stood still and let time and Germany just waft past them. The scenes witnessed that evening were just some of the most poignant ones seen in recent times.

A modern day sporting tragedy

In an era far removed from Greek tragedies, Brazil’s national football team became the centrepiece in this modern day sporting tragedy, one that can claim to rival Greek tragedies of yore from Aeschylus, Sophocles and Euripides.

As much as word may be out that Germany were clearly far superior and that Brazil were destined to fail, let’s get things straight, events like Tuesday are freak results; they come along rarely. Brazil aren’t that bad and Germany aren’t that good, period. Five of the seven goals conceded were gifts presented to the Germans in an unexpected show of hospitality from the hosts, the nature of which were so welcoming that even a side like San Marino would have pumped in a few goals.

What we witnessed was amongst the most spectacular unravelling ever seen in recent times in sport. Brazil’s footballers just imploded on the pitch against the more seasoned Germans and the result wasn’t pretty.

Pressure can undo so many good things. When you play under pressure, you pretty much stop playing, focussing instead on how best not to mess things up. Brazil were under pressure right from the moment the tournament got underway and that is precisely why they’ve flattered to deceive right through.

A year ago, this team became overwhelming favourites to clinch their sixth World Cup after putting in a masterful run to win the Confederations Cup at home. It is not for nothing that the favourites going into a World Cup have never won; in Brazil’s case, the euphoria and the pressure was just so much more considering them being the hosts and considering the painful memories from 1950 that the country wanted this team to banish.

Brazil’s unconvincing road to the semis

A team cannot go from being world-beaters to being on the wrong end of a 7-1 score line in a jiffy. The truth is Brazil have hardly got out of third gear at this World Cup due to a combination of their own anxiety and how well their opponents have played. Unconvincing is the word that can best be described to sum up how they’ve performed right through, from their opener against Croatia right upto squeaking past Chile and holding off Colombia.

They sparked in fits and spurts and managed to get the job done in order to progress. But then, such an approach can only take you that far, and when you go up against an elite team such as Germany, you have got to be better prepared. Driven by a fear of failure all along, the focus has to been to somehow get the win, while sacrificing all else for the ultimate glory.

Trouble with that approach, sadly, is you tend to not have a fall back option. Brazil right through the tournament exhibited a distinct lack of a clear strategy or game plan. Hence, the reliance on Neymar; hence, the sweaty foreheads and palms when he went down after being kneed in the back by Colombia’s Juan Zuniga.

“We missed you skipper”

Without Neymar, they were going to struggle offensively, but Thiago Silva’s absence at the heart of the defence was always going to have more severe implications, though no one could have quite predicted the scale of damage that was eventually inflicted. Their captain has been immense for them in this tournament and in my opinion has been more crucial to the team than Neymar. I say so because, once you gloss over the goals and attractive play that the Samba boys displayed en route to the semi-final, their progress was more a grit-and-grind display, of overcoming opponents rather than overpowering them. And at the heart of it all was the man from PSG.

Brazil’s Thiago Silva (R) consoles David Luiz

Strong rear-guard action was required in every game that Brazil played – against Croatia, Mexico, Cameroon, Chile, Colombia – and Silva stepped up to the plate magnificently every single time. His marshalling of the defence was superb to watch as he kept his teammates focussed and was always proactive, shouting out instructions and keeping his team huddled together. His presence makes David Luiz play better and that recklessness in his game is hardly seen when Silva is around.

He wasn’t around on Tuesday in the semi-final, wasn’t around to rally his troops when they were shooting themselves in the foot, wasn’t around to bring about a sense of calm to the back four in particular and the team in general. For four of the seven goals conceded, Brazil even had numbers back, only they weren’t really marking anyone, just marking space. A fine leader of men, the only one perhaps in this team, he was sorely missed out on the pitch that evening.

Brazil didn’t lack talent, they lacked experience

This team that played as such an effective unit with so much cohesion and unity in winning the Confederations Cup also played with a great degree of freedom at that event. An uninhibited approach allowed them to play their games at their full potential knowing full well that the event was but a precursor, a warm up, to the big event a year away. Failure to win it would not be the end of the world. In 2014, at the showpiece event though, the stakes were much higher, and Brazil crumbled.

All those saying that is the worst ever generation of Brazilian players to ever play for the Selecao could not be farther from the truth. Brazil’s remarkable self-combustion came not due to a lack of talent, but due to a lack of maturity and experience. This squad was simply too young and too inexperienced to handle itself when backed into a corner.

Of the four semi-finalists this year, Brazil clearly was the odd man out, for every other team had a solid core of five to six veteran pros with plenty of experience behind them. Argentina’s entire team boasts of players that have now been playing for years in the top leagues in Europe and South America with plenty of caps under their belt; Germany has a strong veteran core of Philip Lahm, Bastian Schweinsteiger, Per Mertesacker and Miroslav Klose to look to for leadership and even their younger players have a World Cup under their belt already; the Netherlands likewise have Robin van Persie, Arjen Robben, Wesley Sneijder, Nigel de Jong and Dirk Kuyt. All of them big-match players, all of them seasoned professionals capable of handling themselves well in high-pressure situations.

Contrast that with Brazil and you find no one of note barring Julio Cesar and Dani Alves. Even their captain, Thiago Silva, is an amateur when compared to those leading the other three semi-finalists.

‘Big Phil’ fails to provide the major lift

This team is no doubt talented; the trouble is they have hardly been able to will themselves to play anywhere close to their best. That’s why the blame, entirely, must go to the coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, for this acrimonious debacle.

Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari had no answers to Germany’s onslaught

Scolari’s missteps began from the day when the squad was announced. He opted for caution over flamboyance when he selected a gut of defensive-minded midfielders in the squad and left out players such as Lucas Moura. During the whole tournament, he seemed to be unable to influence the game during periods when his side were under pressure. His substitutions seemed to follow a preset order rather than being influenced by how the game was going. Tactically, he was outsmarted by almost every single opposing coach, including that of Cameroon. Perhaps the most shocking decision of all was him deciding to play Maicon in the right-back position against Germany. Who was he kidding?

Dani Alves may have been sub-par for much of the tournament and his benching in the quarter-final against Colombia may have been to send a strong message to him, but not playing your best right-back against a team like Germany is asking for trouble. Even more so when you’ve already been forced to include Dante in central defence thanks to Silva’s absence. Both Maicon and Dante let the team down massively. Maicon has been washed up for some time now; he is backup at AS Roma for a reason.

Road to redemption

There are some clear problems with this team, like the need for a good centre-forward. The other main issue they will have to address by the time the Copa America comes around and subsequently the next World Cup, is the right-back and the goalkeeper positions. Julio Cesar could be playing in his last World Cup and Alves may not be around too when the next one comes around.

This team is extremely young and culling the entire lot in favour of other alternatives would be too harsh a decision. Each of these players have exhibited considerable potential at club level and together as a team to be kept in the mix for upcoming tournaments. A knee-jerk reaction is the easy way out, but not the right one at this point. Ensuring continuity is a key part of squad building. Barring a coaching change, the players have to be given more time. They just have to look at the team that butchered them in the semi-final to understand that.

This German team’s road to the final began eight years ago, in similar conditions at home, where they fell to wily Italian team in the semis. That squad headed by Jürgen Klinnsmann and the subsequent one in 2010 bore much resemblance in that they all had a young core of players. With greater experience and maturity, they are now once more in the final, 12 years after they made the final in 2002 at Korea/Japan. And redemption is a great motivator to help inspire a bunch of players out of a funk after such a heavy defeat.

That road to redemption begins later tonight when they take on the Netherlands in their country’s capital in the third-place playoff. While no team really likes to play this particular match in a World Cup, for Brazil it provides an immediate opportunity to redeem themselves in the eyes of their country mates, and more importantly to help them believe in themselves once again. It definitely is a game that Brazil need more than the Dutch, considering their rather narrow, gut-wrenching defeat to the Argentines in the second semi-final.

The original tragedies from the Greeks were aimed at depicting actions that were so complete and noble, that through trial and tribulation, the emotions of the audience were to be transformed from pity and fear to compassion and other pleasurable emotions resulting in a catharsis of the troubled soul. A similar renewal and restoration process lies in front of the current Selecao crop for they would like to wind up affairs at their home World Cup on a high and provide their fans with a sense of belief and hope that they can and will be back with a bang the next time around.