Semifinal Game 1

Brazil is not only without the services of their captain, Silva, for his second yellow card, their head of PR has been banned for 4 games and fined 10k Swiss francs for roughing up a Chile player during halftime of an earlier game. The team has racked up 96 fouls and 10 yellow cards so far, more than any other side in the tournament and then have the gall to ask FIFA for leniency in Silva’s case.

This is not good for football, especially Latin American football. I would feel a lot better if I didn’t get the feeling that some of those involved think that games are won by the casualty count instead of the goal count.

The game starts at 3PM CDT, so I’ll be updating with more later…

Wow! It happened but none of the ‘experts’ saw it coming. No one would suggest this as a probable outcome at this level.

In hindsight the Germans must have been testing their assumptions during the first ten minutes. Then Muller drew first blood at 11 minutes, followed by the final tweaking and the blitzkrieg was launched. Miroslav Klose entered the record books at 23 minutes, scoring for the 16^th time in a World Cup finals round. Kroos scored a minute later, and then again at 26 minutes. Khedira waited three minutes before he scored the fourth goal in 6 minutes. The first half ended Brazil 0-5 Germany.

After a half like that you would expect Germany to play defense to win, but they played defense the entire game, and Schürrle [a sub for Klose at 59 minutes] felt he needed to do his part so he added goals at 69 and 79 minutes.

Brazil finally responded at 90 minutes when Oscar snuck one in, so the game ended: Brazil 1-7 Germany. Just wow…