Colombia’s Juan Zuniga merely cracked a vertebra which will soon recover. Germany broke the backbone and pride of a nation from which there is no recovery. And they did it in such a clinical ease that the 2 million Brazilians in and around Bela Horizonte, headed by the hapless 11 in the middle, learnt a new and much more painful meaning of carnage, shock, shame and helplessness.
23, 24, 26 and 29 — six minutes to sudden death and then to undiluted mockery, that’s not the way even the Germans would have envisaged a victory over the hosts reeling under talent cut due to an injury and a yellow card. But it took them only 29 minutes to raise the starkest questions ever around Scolari’s so-called magic boys who resembled players of every game other than football.
What to talk of the complete vanishing trick of Brazilian defenceIJ The forward line was even more miserable. Fred managed to touch the ball perhaps only as many times as Mueller scored his goals! Hulk came down as incredibly lame in the box and Neymar’s replacement can only be called Faint Bernard.
To add insult to injury, as Ronaldo looked on from the stands, Germany’s Miroslav Klose marked his new record over the Brazilian legend’s long standing 15 World Cup goals against his home team and on his home Cup, scoring his 16th in style that gave Julio Cesar the unenvied tag of a bumbling buffoon.
Brazil was at Bela Horizonte what the Indian cricket team was at Jo’burg in the 2003 World Cup Final, Roger Federer was against Djoker in the US Open semifinal of 2010 and the Indian hockey team was at the london Olympics and ever after! As for the beautiful tribute to Neymar, he couldn’t play so his team didn’t too! He cried in helplessness, pain and injury. His team did too! He lies immobilised. So do his mates. Call it the Belo Horizonte moment — taking over from the Maracanazos which Brazil has mourned since 1950. Anything of bigger shock value in storeIJ Perhaps, the prospect of an all-European Final in South American territory!
Brazil showed up as a nation without defence or offence or, for that matter, willpower, gumption, strength or speed and, thus, was ripped apart in the opening minutes, never to recover. Seeing the professional German blows which kept coming in such quick succession, there was reason to believe that even the otherwise unemotional Germans had started feeling bad for the Brazilians.
By the 67th minute, when the sixth goal came, it turned into such a routine matter that neither the Germans were celebrating wildly, nor the Brazilians mourning deeply. The crowd in the stands had, by then, long taken to booing their very own — much after tears had dried up and shock had given way to anger, disgust and futility of being.