[flere-imsaho]

Originally Posted by Toddzilla

This didn't get the credit it deserves - well played, good sir.

Agreed! On the plus side, all the poor moderators of the SI Games forums who have to put up with people shouting "it's a bug!" now have something they can use to shut those complaints down.

Originally Posted by bbgunn

I have a hard time believing that even this Brazil team, which undoubtedly is not as good as the 1994-2002 version, is so mentally weak that they would just collapse after a goal in the 11th minute. We're talking about one of the most passionate soccer nations in the world.

It's not so much about a mental collapse through emotion as it's an inability to respond to an opponent that's ruthlessly exploiting your weaknesses.

Can you imagine the Heat losing LeBron and Battier, and going out and losing to the Spurs in the Finals 132-52? In Miami? Didn't think so.

If Neymar is LeBron then Thiago Silva is Bosh, only more important.

And even with no Thiago Silva, and with David Luis as captain, the defense was supposed to be the stronger part of this Brazil team. How much difference does a captain really make? It's not cricket.

It's not that Silva's the captain, it's that he's the most tactically astute defender they had. David Luiz is a good player and all, but it's telling that his club mainly plays him as a defensive midfielder, so as to take advantage of his offensive capabilities and minimize the impact of his defensive lapses. When you are expecting David Luiz to be able to coordinate his defenders to adjust to the fact that a team as good as Germany has "solved" their defensive strategy, you are in real trouble.

And while Brazil had a good defense coming into the tournament, it certainly wasn't a great defense. Both fullbacks were more attackers than anything else, and there were plenty questions about the defensive midfield.

Definitely some of the players were paid off. The last five or six goals, it looked like only Julio Cesar was giving any effort to stop those goals. The Brazilian back line were standing around doing nothing, like policemen in New Orleans.

Paid off by whom? Also, you realize each of these guys (with few exceptions) make somewhere between $50,000 and $500,000 PER WEEK, right? Assuming any of these guys would be open to throwing a Semi Final in what is almost certainly the only World Cup to be held in their country in their playing careers, you'd be looking at tens of millions per player for them to assume such risk.

You want to tell me that Germany is that good? They couldn't even beat Ghana! They should have pasted the U.S. 4-0 or 5-0.

Germany is one of those teams who play just as well as they need to play, and the U.S. game was a good case in point. And Brazil just had an epic collapse. Collapses happen to teams all the time, this was just an extreme case.