5-0 to Germany at the 2010 World Cup, Diego
Maradona was accused of a naive tactical
approach against one of the strongest sides in the
competition. But what happened to coach Luiz
Felipe Scolari and Brazil at home to Joachim Low's
side on Tuesday night was much, much worse.
Everything that could go wrong did go wrong in
ended up being an embarrassing 7-1 defeat and
for all the Brazilian bravado about being able to
cope without their two best players, the starting XI
looked decidedly ordinary sans Neymar and Thiago
Silva.
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For all the talk of Brazil's quality in defense, their
back line was picked apart at will. The first goal
was a gift as awful marking allowed Thomas Muller
to arrive late and score from a corner. With Silva in
the side, that may never have happened, but the
captain was out after picking up a needless yellow
card against Colombia. Not even he could have
imagined how costly that would be.
In his absence, Dante came in alongside David
Luiz, but the back line was defending far too high
up the pitch. With Neymar, Scolari had seemed
content for his team to defend deep and attack on
the break. But against Germany, they played a high
line which was easily exploited by Low's attackers,
while huge holes in the midfield allowed the
Europeans the freedom of the Mineirao pitch.
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Brazilian fans watched in shock and horror as 0-1
became 0-2, 0-3, 0-4 and 0-5 in the space of six
minutes. Disbelief turned to depression inside Belo
Horizonte's superb stadium; with less than half an
hour gone, Brazil's dreams of lifting the World Cup
at home were in tatters.
The players left the pitch amid of chorus of jeers at
halftime and whatever Scolari said at the break, it
had some impact as Brazil began brightly. But
beating Manuel Neuer proved much more difficult
than finding a way past Julio Cesar and the Bayern
keeper made two superb saves to deny the home
team.
Brazil's revival didn't last long anyway as
substitute Andrea Schurrle made it six and then
seven, before a late consolation from Oscar which
still received the biggest cheer of the night -
probably pent-up tension and anger. But this was a
reverse of epic proportions, a loss to replace the
Maracanazo in the history of the Selecao's most
damaging defeats. A Mineirazo.
And it's all down to Scolari. The Brazil boss must
take the blame for most of what went wrong. Ask
any Brazilian to name the nation's best goalkeeper
and very few will say Julio Cesar, a player recently
struggling at QPR. Then there was the absence of
Atletico Madrid's in-form defender Joao Miranda
and the clumsy handling of the Diego Costa case
which saw Brazil lose perhaps its one world-class
center forward to Spain. With Neymar out,
Ronaldinho would have been useful too - even at
the age of 34. He is a player who can provide a
spark out of nothing - and Brazil has very few of
those right now.
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