“TO EXPLAIN the inexplicable is complicated.” That is how Júlio César, Brazil’s goal-keeper, summed up the 7-1 rout by the Germans in the semifinals of the World Cup on July 8th. The 2-1 defeat to Uruguay at Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro in 1950, the last time Brazil hosted the event, looks mild by comparison. So does the 3-0 loss to the then-host France in 1998.
Brazilians reconciled themselves to the tournament’s 28 billion reais ($11.5 billion) price tag with the hope that on July 13th in Rio they would make up for 1950 and win a sixth World Cup championship. Instead, they will now be biting their nails before the third-place playoff against Argentina or the Netherlands a day earlier.
The game will surely go down as one of the lowest points in Brazilian history. Besides a bloody war with Paraguay in 1865-70, the country has never faced a serious foreign threat—other than on the football pitch. And there, more often than not, it has excelled. Even following this defeat, Brazilians have lifted the World Cup trophy five times, more than any other nation.
It could have been worse. After their fifth goal the Germans seemed to let up a bit, either to spare Brazil more shame or to save their energy for the final. That only made Brazilian players’ utter helplessness starker, since they lost the game from that point on as well, 2-1. The 62,000 supporters at the stadium in Belo Horizonte booed. In Recife, a host city in the north-east, the score caused such commotion at the Fan Fest that police felt compelled to launch tear gas into the crowd. In Vila Madalena, São Paulo’s main watering hole, fans burned the Brazilian flag. But at the Fest in the city centre people just cried—or laughed at their team’s ineptitude.
Now most seem too stunned to be seriously angry. Never before has any team conceded as many goals in a World Cup semifinal. In fact, the extent of the defeat might help channel Brazilians’ ire towards the squad, in particular the coach, Luis Felipe Scolari, and away from gripes about cost and inconvenience. It was so horrific that even President Dilma Rousseff’s rivals for office in an election this October may try to put the debacle behind them and not use it to score political points, though anything that plays so deeply into the national mood of pessimism cannot be good for an incumbent.
Broader unrest of the sort that accompanied a warm-up tournament last June (which Brazil won) is also unlikely. It helps that, in contrast to its footballers, Brazil’s infrastructure, at least the visitor-facing variety, performed much better than expected. Flights ran on time; buses ferried fans between airports and venues on new motorways; hotels held up. As one wag (and former Economist journalist) tweeted astutely, “Brazil is now just like any other boring old democracy: capable of putting on the cup, incapable of winning it.”
Brazilians have also proved to be gracious hosts. Foreign fans extolled their hospitality and festive spirit. At the São Paulo Fan Fest they clapped and even doffed their oversized green-and-yellow supporter hats to the handful of smug Germans.
