BELO HORIZONTE — It was the night Germany removed the crown from football royalty.
Guardian
They did so with their own version of the beautiful game and, by the time they had finished, Brazil had suffered an ignominy that was so extreme and implausible it made it feel as though a black marker pen had been taken to the pages of their football history.
No team in that famous shirt has ever suffered in the way Luiz Felipe Scolari’s had to during a brutal first half in which Germany scored five times in the space of 18 minutes and played as though the team in front of them might as well have been invited from the beach.
Brazil were embarrassed in a way that will make them look back on this tournament and want to cover their eyes. This wasn’t a team losing. It was a dream dying.
There was anger, resentment, but also, close to the end, an appreciation of what they were seeing. Schürrle’s second goal prompted a standing ovation. Soon afterwards, Brazil’s fans could be heard shouting “olé” to every German touch.
Until this stage, Brazil’s matches had been a celebration of colour and noise. So much loud, relentless din. Yet now, there was the eery sound of silence and other noises, too.
It was something approaching fear, a strange gargled sound that could be heard every time Germany elegantly broke forward, threatening even more humiliation.
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The sight of Brazil, with all their rich football history, being dismantled this way was actually shocking, in part.
What cannot happen, however, is for the story to be all about Brazil’s deficiencies when Germany have just put on one of the all-time performances.
It was a masterclass. There is no other word that does it justice and all that is left for Joachim Löw now is to hope his team has not peaked too early.
For Brazil, the inquest will be torturous. It was always going to end in tears, but nobody could have imagined that, midway through the first half, the television cameras would already be zooming in on the first sobs.
That was at 3-0 and, five minutes later, the score had risen to five. If it had continued at that rate for the rest of the match, Brazil would have sieved 15. And there were times in that first half, as crazy as it sounds, when it did seem as though Germany were genuinely in the mood for double figures.
In the process, Miroslav Klose scored his 16th World Cup goal, removing Ronaldo from the record books with one swish of his right boot. Thomas Müller oozed confidence, scoring his fifth goal of the tournament and offering the sense that this was all perfectly normal.
Mesut Özil did not score, but he did enough, all the same, to turn the volume down on some of his critics. Toni Kroos showed — left foot, right foot — why Real Madrid want to take him from Bayern Munich. Kroos, with two goals, was Germany’s outstanding performer, though Sami Khedira was not too far behind.
And Brazil? After all the tributes to Neymar, the brandishing of his No 10 jersey during the national anthems and the arrival of the team in “Força Neymar” baseball caps, maybe they should have given more credence to the fact their captain, Thiago Silva, was also missing, without even a fraction of the hysteria.
The night was a personal ordeal for Dante, Silva’s replacement, while David Luiz had suddenly become the player, once again, who will always give his opponents a chance.
