I was watching that game whilst composing an email about Germany’s performance to Scottish/German couple of friends. I kept having to change the level of praise and incredulity as the goals poured in. I eventually gave up and did it at half time.
Well, back to the line “see what Brazil are made of.” A team can react in one of three ways to starting out badly and falling into an early hole:
They really bear down and get back into it
They panic and open up too much and lose worse
They give up and embarrass themselves
Brazil that day chose Option 3, and they chose it hard. If you watch the goals, by the time you get the Khadira’s goal - #5, if you’ve lost count by that point - it’s just a farce. Brazil offers no resistance and it’s like the Germans are just fooling around in practice. I’ve quite certain Germany could have scored ten or twelve goals that day but didn’t simply because it’s not really sportsmanslike to keep piling it on. If soccer officials could call technical knockouts, it’s right after Khadira’s goal that the match would have been stopped. I have never seen a team that good give up that pathetically.
That of course was the shocking aspect of it. If I’d told you “Brazil is going to play like a bunch of idiots to start, and then they will visibly fold like a cheap tent, give up, and play even worse. If it wasn’t for the uniforms you’d never in a million years think it was the Brazilian national side,” you would not have believed me for an instant. These things are always subjective but I’ve never been more shocked at a team or person putting on such a miserable performance. Sometimes you get your ass kicked. That just happens. But Brazil looked like they did not know what they were doing and did not particularly care, either. It was, well, shocking. I was amazed at what I was seeing.
I thought Mike Tyson’s performance in the Buster Douglas fight far less shocking, for example; obviously the result was WAY more shocking than Germany beating Brazil, but it’s not like Tyson stumbled out of his corner, boxing lefthanded because he forgot he was righthanded, visibly gave up in the first round and fell down the second time he was hit, which is what the equivalent performance would have been. He got beaten up pretty badly but he put up a spirited fight for ten rounds - I’ll tell you, you won’t see many boxers take the punishment he did and still keep fighting - and did nearly win the fight in the eighth.
What people forget is that the Brazilians were playing without their two best players, Neymar and Thiago Silva (probably that tournament’s best defender). It was more like if Mike Tyson had gone into a fight with an injured left shoulder and broken right hand.
The Brazilians never had a chance of winning this game; the only surprise was how supinely the surrendered once the going got tough. Without Neymar, they were not the attacking threat upfront; meaning the Germans could play forward; sans Silva their defence was hopeless; as the remaining fullbacks tended to go forward and leave space at the back. All the Germans did was pass the ball around until the Brazilian fullbacks came forward and viola instant space in which to score. With Thiago Silva, there would not have been space, with Neymar that would have invisted a counterattack.
Lahm or Hummels would not have dared to go and stay that forward if Neymar had been playing.
I completely disagree that Brazil had no chance to win.
1)It was a single match
2)It was played in Brazil
3)Greece winning the Euros anyone?
Brazil’s biggest issue wasn’t losing Neymar and Thiago Silva, IMO. It was a shocking drop in the quality of their entire squad and a lack of a coherent tactic.
Well, let’s not forget that they didn’t have Thiago Silva because he committed an unbelievably stupid, unnecessary, avoidable foul for interfering with a goal kick in the previous match and thus got a suspension for yellow card accumulation. Why you would commit a foul that’s an obligatory booking when you’re already sitting on a card is beyond me.
I think the idea that Brazil had no chance and the fact that missing one defender means that the rest play like a u-11 rec team are both wildly overblown. If Silva is the difference between that defense and a normal defense, then he’s the best player in the history of any sport.
SIlva and Neymar. Do you think Lahm would have been as far forward so blithely had he had to content with Neymar rather than (checks; Bernard)? Plus it was not that Silva was some superhuman, it was that the Brazilians had a press forward strategy throughout the tournament, with the Fullbacks going forward regularly and David Luiz playing up as well. Without their two main players they did not have the ability to execute it effectively and did not have the depth on the bench to do so.
Agree completely. Hockey is similar to the “any given Sunday” football mentality but also a game of momentum shifts. The 2 “weak” goals in the 1st kept the US in the game. They survived the 2nd and went into the 3rd trailing 3-2. The Russians were obviously frustrated.
When the US tied the game on the PP, the shift in confidence and energy was palpable.
I think the shocking part was that it was Buster Douglas who took the “unbeatable” Tyson down. Almost everyone (except Douglas’ corner) thought this was merely a tune up fight for Holyfield.
What was more shocking was how he beat him. He shocked Tyson in the first, survived the vicious attack in the 8th, and basically outboxed him for most often rounds.
And what can happen when a side pushes to many defenders forward? And then depends on a mediocrity like David Luiz to anchor your back line? Brazil lost because they didn’t adapt tactically.
IMO the game was lost in the midfield. Brazil could have thrown Baressi and Maldini out there and it wouldn’t have mattered.
Adapt tactically…how? They did not have the firepower upfront to realistically threaten the Germans; they had Fred, Bernard and Hulk. Except for Oscar the Mid Field was lousy and had been augmented throughout the tournament by the fullbacks making deep runs and David Luiz pushing forward regularly.
You can lose the midfield battle and still win the game if you have a good defence, just see Italy in the last Euros when Spanish domination of midfield play led to few real chance because the defence had caused the play to peter out before it created one, or Athletico over the past few years.
Not sure what the could have done. Not played Marcelo ,who was IMO more at fault than Luiz; who gets the blame since he was Captain that day maybe.Maybe Ramires and Willian might have made it more interesting. But that Brazil side was one trick pony and said pony’s back had been broken the previous game.
Tiknonov, says that now but at the time, the Russians went on to score in the first couple of minutes of the 2nd, Myshkin did not allow any goals and they dominated the period.
After the PP goal and the subsequent go ahead goal, the Russians were in panic mode and their whole game plan fell apart.
