In all fairness, this is the worst Brazilian team in recent memory. Their last friendly game before the World Cup with Serbia was a tight 1-0 victory over Serbia which played better for long periods of the game. Their performance in the opening World Cup game against Croatia was going poorly until the referee invented a penalty for them. They were held by Mexico and then hammered Cameroon to qualify. They were fortunate to beat Chile on penalties and resorted to thuggish roughhouse tactics against Colombia singling out James Rodriguez for particularly brutal treatment. Neymar’s injury in that game seemed almost karmic. Brazil played well only in patches against Mexico, Chile and Colombia, but they never really seemed like the Brazil of old, the Selecao renowned for their devotion to Jogo Bonito, the beautiful game, and they were hopelessly dependent on Neymar who arguably singlehandedly dragged them into the second round. The Brazil strategy seemed to be to pass the ball to Neymar and let him weave his magic. It was always likely that they would be found out against a better side which was what happened dramatically against Germany. Yes, Brazil were without Neymar and Thiago Silva but even if they had played, a German victory was always the more likely outcome. Germany were fundamentally the better side and were themselves missing talents like Marco Reus, Ilkay Gundogan, and the twins, Lars and Sven Bender. The better team deservedly won with a score line that exposed the folly of depending on individual genius in a team sport. This Brazilian team was really poor. Felipe Scolari’s decision to indulge (non-scoring) strikers like Fred and Jo while ignoring Diego Costa, one of the best forwards in Europe, who then opted to play for Spain, was really bad management. Brazil finished the tournament with the unlikely record of having conceded the most goals and to the ringing boos of their infuriated fans. They will have to go back to the drawing board. Perhaps, the lesson here is that individual genius can only take a team so far. Team sports are dominated by great teams, not great individuals.
Posted on: Sat, 12 Jul 2014 22:20:11 +0000
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