Germans throw Brazil into football's dark age
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 defence? 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