#worldcupsemifinal

What's Yours Opinion for Today's Match

It isn’t often that in any type soccer match at the highest of levels that one professional team has such an emphatic, devastating defeat over another first-rate soccer team. Moments after Germany’s devastating, humiliating, nation-crushing 7-1 demolition of Brazil, this match marked the end of a tradition. This score line will be generation-changing not because of the score itself; but to who it was done to, the  location where it was done, and at the stage at the World Cup in which it was done  That 7-1 defeat at the hands of Germany marked the end of the most beautiful way of playing football known to man, The Joga Bonito.

.From the middle of the 20th century, Brazil dazzled the World with amazing skill at an individual level and as a collective unit. The first Brazil World Cup Championship squad of 1958 included the likes of soccer legends like Garrincha, Didi, Vava, and a 17 year-old youngster named Edson Arantes do Nascimento, known to you and me as Pele, just to name a few. The greatest Brazil squad ever assembled, many experts say, was the brilliant 1970 squad which featured Pele in his peak form with other greats like Carlos Alberto, Rivelino, Jairzinho, and Tostao. This nucleus of players put the World at their feet with their brilliant skill and technique, leading to Brazil’s third World Cup in four opportunities.

The 1982 squad, considered by many as the greatest never to win the World Cup played to the beat of the Samba drum winning games and playing spectacularly. With Zico, Socrates, and Falcao as the pillars of that squad they managed to fuse sport and art together.

Unfortunately as more pragmatic, systemic defensive schemes took place in the last 30 years, Brazil’s flamboyancy and joy to the game began to fade. Even the squads that won the 1994 and 2002 World Cups did not have the same spectacle that teams in the past have. This 2014 World Cup squad was considered ordinary even with the young superstar, Neymar donning the yellow shirt. Something was not right with this team. The Mineriazo as many call it had the writing on the wall right from Brazil’s opening match.