Photo by ISIPhotos.com
With Thiago Silva out for Brazil, David Luiz will captain Brazil in the World Cup semifinal against Germany (4 p.m. ESPN). That is not the biggest change for the five-time champions, however.
The host nation will be without Neymar, after the 22-year-old forward was knocked out of the host nation’s victory over Colombia with a fractured vertebrae. To this point in the tournament, Neymar has been in contention for the Golden Boot with four goals, trailing only Colombia’s James Rodriguez.
After narrowly escaping against Algeria, Germany had to hold on for dear life to beat France. Mats Hummels scored the lone goal for Germany 13 minutes into the match. Thanks to a big performance from Manuel Neuer, the Germans were able to hold on and keep their dream of a fourth World Cup triumph alive. Thomas Muller remains in contention for the Golden Boot, sitting level with Neymar and Lionel Messi with four goals.
If you will be watching today’s matches, please feel free to share your thoughts, opinions and some play-by-play in the comments section below.
Enjoy the action.
This is what happens when you lose your main attacker and main defender. Brazil has never been the same since they started this organized soccer b.s they need to bring back the flair. Stick to what you’re good at.
I am surprised at the apparent lack of depth on the Brazillian team. If the US lost its/our best forward and best defender, I could see this type of collapse. But this is just amazing to me.
Is Neymar really that good folks, that his absence leads to this collapse?
The US did lose our best forward (JA) in the first match and the best defender (FJ) in the last one. Besler also had to be replaced in the first match, and Brooks was more than adequate.
This result is shocking.
That was organized soccer?
Low needs to institute some U-11 rules in a rout. No shooting outside of the 6. Schurrle already blew up the “only shoot with your off foot.”
7-0, a scoreline American football fans can relate to
7-0
Is this the Reign of Germany?
Reign of ESPANA ended 4 weeks ago
This is the system that Klinsmann set up in Germany that’s producing all these players and Americans are complaining about his decision making???? He may not be a club type coach but he’s exactly what the national team needs
stop giving Klinsmann phantom credit 8 years later-Lowis the coach and most of theseplayers have been brought in wella fter JK was run out of Bayern with his players and fans wishing him good riddance…
or are you going to also give Arena and Bradley credit for putting in the defense-first, bunker and counter system that US deployed at this World Cup to escape te group of Death?
He not talking about how the team plays right now, more in the big picture of turning a program around for generations. It’s hard to know how much Klinsmann had to do with that, but unless we have any better ideas, lets see what he can do.
Wait, didn’t we deploy an attacking 4-4-2 triangle? 🙂
Lol give it a rest
Ussoccer needs to set up an office in Germany and go thru all the servicemen record. we can actually steal talent from the worlds best team
Didn’t 3 German-Americans just score in this world cup for us?
Yup. Those guy are pretty good.?Besler and Tedlin to the Bundesliga!!
Wrong. US Soccer needs to set up a youth development system that produces players here in the US that are as good as the one we just saw out there tonight for Germany.
Actually Klinsman is responsible for changing the way that players are developed in Germany for the national team. He was responsible for that. It was his philosophy. It is widely accepted and he was wanted back by the national team. Now Bayern Muchen is a different story. He clashed with management.
Agreed. Germany invested massive amounts of money to overhaul its youth development structure after a poor showing in Euro 2000. Muller, Ozil, Reus, Goetze, etc. are among the first products of that revamped development system. I’m sure Klinsmann will do his best to try to replicate that same formula with the U.S.
honest question: do you have a source for that?
i remember klinsmann instituting new fitness requirements and trying to move germany toward a more attacking scheme, but the major system overhaul i’m thinking of started in 1999/2000, before klinsmann.
+1. Klinsmann not only changed the style of play of the German NT after taking over as head coach in 2004 but also had a determining influence on the youth academies and the professional teams. The following article sums it up perfectly: http://www.latimes.com/sports/soccer/worldcup/la-sp-wc-juergen-klinsmann-germany-world-cup-20140707-story.html .
Unfortunately I’m not watching the game…But I wonder, beyond missing Thiago Silva and what sounds like a defensive breakdown by Brazil, how much of this blowout could be attributed to Germany having stepped up their game?
It’s a break down that turned into shock, that just keeps getting worse.
will any German-made product be bought in Brazil ever again?
Who remember when Germany beat Saudi Arabia 8-0 in the 2002 WC?
I do-my question was who the F is this Klose guy who just kept scoring?
The same guy that now beat Brazil’s Ronaldo for all time WC scoring.
thanks for answering my question from 12 years ago-I was wondering what happened to that guy
Still remember being angry hearing people suggest that Asia deserved more slots (at our expense) because of S.Korea’s [totally legit] semi-final run, as though we needed more comedy sides like Saudi Arabia in the tournament.
Brazilian defenders honestly just standing around.
Those passing lanes are huge. Uncontested balls being sprayed from the just beneath the midfield/center stripe to Brazil’s defensive third.
how atrocious is Bernard? his first touch and crossing ability is US college player circa 1990
Any one worried that mls will be blame for Julio Cesar poor form today?
who cares? does Dante play for Chivas USA and Luiz for DC United?
Some will I’m sure, but there wasn’t much he could do. Germany were just passing circles around Brazil.
Also there he just kept it from being 6.
and 7….
No he won’t be blamed. Can’t stop much when the guys in front of you are playing like keystone cops. But Fred, Hulk, the whole dam midfield should leave Brazil for awhile they have played awful.
Neuer may best Howard’s save mark
Bernard is the Brazilian Bedoya and Fred is Wondolowski-NOT compliments
Leaving Lucas off the roster doesn’t seem like the smartest idea anymore
Why am I enjoying all these Brazilian tears http://i.minus.com/i8Noum4fZjDPV.gif
I believe it’s called Schadenfreude.
That’s what happens when you grow up thinking it’s your god-given right to win the world cup. Brazil needed some humble pie.
Long gone is the golden generation of Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaka, Cafu, Romario…
This is not normal and I cant believe Im feeling sorry for Brazilians. I think the pressure they put on these kids is just too much!!! I dont think anyone can deal with this kind of pressure from a country, politicians , fans , riots etc. It’s not entirely their fault no matter how bad this team is compared to other Brazil NTs. Germany is playing with all that
Who’s fault is it if you lose 7-1. That’s not even a coaching thing that’s one the players on that field
Can Brazil change the difficulty setting at half time?
Brazil was never really convincing, they barely made it with Chile in penalty kicks. But Brazil losing a semi-final at half time 0-5 is just shocking.
Argentina will really need to step it up, other wise it’s Germany v Netherlands at the final.
Sami Khedira scored!!! Read that again Sami Khedira scored!!!! How much do they pay the Brazilian CB’s? I’m tired of seeing US players get low balled. Give Besler and Gonzales the bank!!!
Brazil just not tracking runners, not cutting down passing lanes. Not playing as a unit at all and get punished for it.
This. The Brazil midfield is not tracking the German midfield runners.
wait..at half-time? it’s 6-0?
No, no. It’s not nearly that bad. It was only 5-0 at halftime.
only…
Now we get to watch them lose the third place match this weekend
if it’s vs Argentina, I’d be pulling for Brazil
Things might get ugly quick if/when the angry fans join up with the protests already in progress….
Those Brazil fans crying are hilarious
Man. Zero leadership in this Brazil side. We might not be elite, but I’m thankful this *never* happens to us.
That 1-0 vs. Germany is looking downright respectable.
Ummm… 4-2 against a terrible Mexico that almost didn’t qualify to this world cup
Are you thinking of the Gold Cup final won by a much different Mexico squad?
I Think they had Ochoa messing and some other staters due testing positive, so may they don’t get scored on?
Ochoa and the starters were all returned by the final because the testing issue was due to bad chicken.
Nope, you have a bad memory
That was three years ago and by my count there were 8 US players in common. Not a single defender on that team played on the 2014 US WCF team.
Wondo, Dempsey, Jozy, Bedoya, JJ, MB, Rimando, Howard.
Yeah a vastly different Mexico squad against a vastly different US squad 3 years ago.
Gold Cup 2009
Mexico 5-0 USMNT
That was no fun. Agree there. But it was nowhere near a full-strength team, with only 4 players staying on after the successful Confed Cup run. And it was scoreless at halftime, so it wasn’t quite the wire-to-wire abuse Brazilians had to endure today
4-2 isn’t great but pretty different from 5-0 at the half.
particularly when we were up 2-0 early on. Remember that was the game where our defense collapsed when the great Steve Cherundolo pulled a hammy (or twanged his knee) and had to come out. He was replaced by Jonathon Borenstein and it disrupted our entire back line who imploded in the remaining 60 minutes.
I think perhaps Ali was thinking of a 1990 WC game where the US was trounced by Czechslovakia
Good memory MW Ref. Although it wasn’t quite so painful as the scoreline read. After Caligiuri pulled us back to 3-1, we did enjoy a decent stretch.
But no sarcasm intended in the original remark. Being a USMNT fan offers suffering aplenty, but we have largely been spared the humiliation of a total meltdown/blowout.
I originally thought Germany beat us terribly, but looked it up and saw that Germany only beat of 2-0 in France 98.
Other bad losses: Poland 3rd game 2002 and Czech Republic 1st game 2006
sorry – meant to say “beat us”.
How did that not get moderated?
The Cze loss in 2006 was among the hardest to watch. We never really had a sniff. A real comedown after 2002.
You are right. We were never in that game, and the older Czech players could not find the stamina to repeat the performance in their remaining games against Ghana and Italy. Ah well, lets remember McBride getting elbowed, and a disallowed goal by Run DMB in the tie against Italy.
Ooohh…. just had a bad gag reflex on that Beaz non-goal. Had almost repressed it all the way.
I want Macca to have a couple of pints at half time.
It’ll be the best broadcast ever
+1 Somebody needs to throw a cat on the pitch.
Steve Bartman will kick the ball away on the touchline thinking it was out of bounds, and Mexican Dracula will forget to stop play allowing Brazil to score the first of 6 second half goals.
Leave Steve Bartman alone. That loss was not his fault. The cubs gave up additional runs. Also, a lot of the people pointing him out were also trying to get the ball.
Germany is plaing 11 on 6- Bernard and Fred are complete no-shows, so are CBs and whoever sits in front of them wh is sposed to close down trailing attackers 15 yards from goal
USA>Brazil
Germany B > Brasil
Fixed it for you
Low>Klinsmann
Low has better players at each position, save for Howard. So there’s also that.
Why you gotta go and put truth in here?
And yes, Howard>Neuer, but it’s close.
Yeah, and Neuer has another cycle in him for certain, and could have two (to the same extent, Howard could)
Lol no, neuer is by the best gk in the world, Howard doesnt make the top 5 at this world cup
Howard definitely makes the top at this World Cup, but Neuer is definitely better.
Sure he does:
Neuer
Curtois
Navas
Howard
Ochoa
Howard better than Neuer??? Are you crazy? Neuer may be the GOAT!!!
Songs will be written about this day, chants will forever haunt Selecao. Holy toledo, how embarrassing to get schooled at home!
+1 If it was possible to play “Taps” on a slide whistle, that would pretty much describe the first half.
Chile and Colombia didn’t close the deal because of injuries. Vidal had surgery on his meniscus in May and couldn’t go the full 90. Colombia had no Falcao. Fix those problems and Brazil wouldn’t be this far. The Confederations Cup was a joke because the teams that were there were not of the same class as this year. Actually Spain revealed its eventual collapse. Mexico was in a tailspin. Had the U.S. brought the right team we might have been playing against Argentina last week. Germany also throttled down against the U.S.
I believe that no team who won the Confed Cup has gone on to win the World Cup the following year
Comparing what this means to the US is kind of pointless. However we play as a unit, track runners, cut out passing lanes and Brazil seemed unwilling to do as much.
If Neuer doesn’t get a goal….
Haha, love it.
Steve McManaman is cracking me up.. flabbergasted he is
Get Mueller out of this mess before he gets hurt. Klinsi can come on… prob score a hat trick
Don’t you mean Jay Goppingen?
+1
I thought Germany would win but certainly did not see this coming!
You just didn’t realize that Germany would win…every 5 minutes.
Sweden came back from 4-0 in a WCQ against Germany….so you never know?
But can Brazil dare to Zlatan? Zlatan think no.
haha yeah it’s not going to happen,
+1
Wow Brazil may have to escape out of the hole in the jacuzzi at halftime. This time their will be no “but we can win this” to stop the escapes. 😉
I’ll just remind everyone that the USMNT lost to Germany 1-0. That’s it. Just 1-0.
Didn’t a bunch of people say we played too defensive? Yeah, open it up and Portugal would have been going through.
Also, Mexico only drew Brazil 0-0. They should be ashamed.
In fairness, Germany did not need to win the game against the U.S. and the game was played on a water logged pitch. Ghana did better against Germany that we did. Brazil is also missing one or two guys.
If USA had won and either Ghana or Portugal had won, then it’d be down to goal differential to get Germany through. Even then, they’d go out second place. You better believe they wanted to secure the win as early as possible. They had to wait until the 55th minute and never got the second goal.
And everyone so quickly forgets Ghana tied them..
Ghana’s best game by far – and maybe only good game
Yeah, and we beat Ghana. What’s your point?
I have no more point than any other person in that chain.
Hehe
That’s silly, Germany never got out of second gear in that game. No way you can compare those two games.
Erh! Wrong. I just did.
You know why they didn’t? Because MB90 and JJ were sitting shotgun with their knees against the shifter.
And Beckerman was dumping sand in the transmission fluid.
Oh yeah and we had a full team. So what Ghana did better. The OP was about us and Germany. We were not sexy good, I’ll give you that but we were also not this bad. Credit where it’s due, is all.
Jozy Altidore sez: “What’s this full team shi-ite you’re spouting?”
I think “Oh yeah and we had a full team” was sarcastic. As in, Brazil was missing an important striker and so was the USA.
Germany also didn’t need to run up the score and embarrass the host nation. However it looks like they didn’t have to much trouble doing so.
Different philosophy. Embarrassing is letting up or going easy on professional adults so you don’t hurt their feelings. No, you show respect by giving them as good as you’ve got.
Plus, there are fans who paid to see two teams play their best. Better to give them half of that than none.
+1
+1
Which explains Brazil’s only goal because Schwienstiger was ripping Ozil a new one for his lazy miss for no. 8. This is the kind of mentality we need to develop at all levels.
You obviously have never played sports at a level other than rec. At this level you NEVER let your foot off the throat of an opponent. Germany lost a 4-0 lead against SWEDEN last year. If Brazil had scored early in the second half who knows?
Actually, Germany was leading 4-0 and Sweden tied the game.
Sorry I misread, my bad.
Our group was truly the group of death. We might lose but no one will give it to us up the a$$ like this
There will be riots.
This has to be match fixing. Brazil has been paid a kings ransom
Would you stop with this garbage? You post this on almost every match.
It’s comment fixing. No one makes this many repetitive comments without being paid.
I’m making up excuses for the Brazilians. They need all the help they can get right now.
Nice comeback 🙂
END THIS GAME come on this is just sad
test these Germans. don’t they have compassion?
wow….a ca wreck of a performance… Scolari should resign at half-time…
Lmao
Is Neymar really that good that he was able to hide all of these Brazilian inefficiencies? This is absolutely incredible.
I’m about to cry because I wanted to see a competitive, hard-fought game, not US vs Barbados or Australia vs Samoa
Brian Ching is warming up on the touchline I think.
if he ever dreamt of a hat-trick vs Brazil, this would be the game
Thiago silva means more to this team than Neymar
wow I guess Neymar and Thiago are really worth the kings ransom they get paid
This one man team is getting exposed. They aren’t getting away with what they got away with against Chile
I continue my attempts at brainwashing. Germany with numbers in the box and the ball has resulted in some goals for Germany. They play compact too. Relentless pursuit of the penalty area with compact numbers. Compact in defense. Germany is doing something right. I know what I talk about. Hopefully MLS and USMNT take a note about playing compact and relentless pursuit of the penalty area.
Brazil, to be fair, relentlessly pursue the penalty area too. It’s not a wonder the semi-final teams got where they are now.
I’ll give you the AND part but playing compact is something we did this cup…heck from the score it looks like we did it much better than Brazil.
It’s easy to slam the US because we didn’t play as sexy as everyone esle did but we only lost to this Germany team 1-0 in a game you know the Gremans wanted to beat us in badly.
Do we have work to do? Yes, no doubt. But we deserev some credit too.
We had to play collectively a defensive effort with a counter attack with the personnel and tactical choices Klinnsman made. All credit goes to the coaches and players for achieving what they did. Not taking anything away, but now we need to manufacture a new team with an effort to play compact relentless pursuit of the penalty area also. Going forward there should be no excuses just a new approach to the game in MLS and the USMNT.
+1
This is insane
CALL TIMEOUT!
refreshment break . . . what did they call it in the netherlands v. mexico game?
“Cooling break” was the term, I believe.
hahahahaha I have no idea how anybody thought this Brazil team would win
OMG… this is heart-breaking to watch…3-0-I’m rooting for an Liverpool-AC Milan style comeback
you spoke way way too soon
Well this is interesting
Ozil is so soft
Geiger is reffing! SBI, how about a piece on the American ref in 2014 WC. He is the first American to officiate a WC semifinal! Another good sign of progress.
I mean, he’s the 4th official…
Yes, he is a ref. Not the center, but the 4th. He ran a couple of group games. This may be the highest level game officiated by an American. He is no Howard Webb, but he is still representing US Soccer and CONCACAF. So he will be the one Scolari and Low yell at for various frustrating calls. And he’ll be holding up the sub and extra time signs. Sign glory
Given the politics (Webb for ARG? hahaha…no.) and confed issues for the remaining four, Geiger has an outside chance at one of the last two games.
Geiger has no chance at the final.
He might if it is GER-ARG. Do you read the “The 3rd Team” blog? The editorial take over there is that Geiger wrecked his chance with FRA – NGA due to a missed penalty and missed SFP, but they do concede that he was generally in charge in every one of his matches – which is more than you can say about some of these centers. The op-eds in the comments are a bit more bullish on his chances d/t politics and confederation neutrality ruling out people who might be considered before him.
Like I said: Outside chance, but yeah… probably not. Especially if it’s an all UEFA final.
I did not know about that blog. My comment was a quick one – kind of like, the chandes of Geiger geting the final are the same as Qatar hosting the WC finals . . whoops.
They also kept a Brazillian ref. Maybe he gets the final?
Who knows what FIFA will do? They also kept Nishamura around during the latest round of ref cuts. Maybe they want to give him the opener and the final? (sarc)