The morning after the night before, Brazil will wake up, shake its head and pray it has all been a terrible nightmare.

copa 2014

Left disorientated, punch drunk and confused by the 7-1 annihilation in the Estádio Mineirão it will take time for the full implications to sink in for a country that had so much invested – in all senses of the word – in World Cup success.

The newspapers, broadcasters and websites that had spent the last few days whipping up a sentimental tidal wave of sympathy for Neymar turned on Luiz Felipe Scolari’s men.

David Luiz, the capering heartbeat of this side and their second most popular player after the stricken No10, was now the tear-stained villain.

The Mineiraço, as it is already being called in an echo of the deep impact of the 1950 Maracanazo when Uruguay defeated Brazil in the final the last time the tournament was held here, was variously described as “the disgrace of all disgraces” and “a historic humiliation”. The sports paper Lance called it “the biggest shame in history”.

The previous day there had been even bigger tailbacks than usual in São Paulo as Brazilians rushed home to ensure they were in front of a television set. By 5pm, the streets were eerily silent in Brazil’s biggest city. What was to follow was equally unsettling.

The effects will be wide-ranging, for a whole host of reasons – political, economic and cultural – in a country where, despite everything, football remains so closely bound up with national identity.

For president, Dilma Rousseff, who found herself the target of obscene chants that had not been heard inside World Cup grounds since the São Paulo opener, the result could have an impact on her re-election prospects in October.

In São Paulo, those catcalls were generally interpreted as the chants of a moneyed crowd who despise her spending on welfare rather than those of a popular uprising.

In Belo Horizonte, intermingled with abuse for the Brazilian players (especially Fred), they felt more like an attempt to lash out at anyone and everyone.

But the dissatisfaction with under-investment in public services, and endemic corruption, of the millions that took to the streets during a Confederations Cup that Brazil won last summer has not gone away.

Immediately following the epochal defeat, Dilma took to Twitter to try to put into words the pain of a nation. “Like every Brazilian, I am very, very sad about this defeat. I am immensely sorry for all of us. Fans and our players,” she said, before borrowing the lyrics of a popular samba song to urge them to “shake off the dust” and rise again. That will be easier said than done.

There were also immediate fears that Brazil’s exit could ignite violent protests or pour petrol on anti-World Cup feelings that have continued to simmer since last summer’s mass marches but have been effectively smothered by police and the prevailing goodwill towards the football – if not Fifa or the authorities – up to now.

That may change, as discontent with Scolari’s humiliated team gives way to deeper introspection about the $11bn price tag of hosting the World Cup.

The tone before the game was already off key. The mawkishness before kick-off – the Neymar hats, the holding up of his shirt like a religious artefact – jarred with the lack of a minute’s silence for the two people killed in the collapse of an overpass in Belo Horizonte last week.

It was as though nothing must be allowed to get in the way of the “Força Neymar” narrative.

One of the striking things about this World Cup is the extent to which Brazil have gone from being everyone’s second favourite team to hardly anyone’s.

There is still the odd tourist clad in yellow and green here, but internationally there has been a backlash against the side – as though they have gone from standing for everything that is right in the game to everything that is wrong.

On the streets of São Paulo, an atmosphere of dazed confusion quickly settled over the city. In the run-up to the opening match, it had felt tense: metro workers were striking, the city’s overcrowded streets were even more congested than usual and there was a sense of foreboding rather than celebration about what the World Cup would bring.

If that changed as the tournament went on and the city loosened up a bit, it flooded back as the goals rained in.

On Paulista, a small gang of protesters against the World Cup revelled in Brazil’s defeat. In Zona Sul, buses were set on fire and a shop looted. But for the vast majority, stunned resignation seemed to be the order of the day.

During that extraordinary first-half flurry of goals, there were tears through dazed eyes. By the end, punch-drunk fans had either turned away from the television altogether or were staring blankly at their phones – as though social networks could somehow make sense of the humiliation.

On the busiest streets of bars after the final whistle, some drank to forget in their green and yellow outfits. Others discreetly took off their brand new Seleção jerseys and pushed them into their bags.

The street sellers across Brazil who had been doing a roaring trade in knock-off Neymar shirts, horns, hooters, flags and other paraphernalia must now take stock of piles of unsold inventory.

In the small bars and lanchonetes that pepper the streets of every Brazilian city, televisions burbled away in the background as small groups sat around over a shared bottle of beer and dissected the most arresting result in Brazilian football history.

Even the pundits looked funereal. Ronaldo, on the World Cup organising committee, stared blankly into space as his colleagues attempted to make some sense of the chaos.

In Rio de Janeiro, the mood was similar – small scuffles broke out and there was panic at a mass robbery on the beach, but the overall atmosphere was somewhere between mutiny and mournful resignation as tens of thousands trooped away from the Copacabana in the teeming rain.

There were reports of arrests in Recife and Salvador, two of the northern cities that have taken this tournament to their heart.

Hundreds of those in the stadium in Belo Horizonte left at half-time but, perhaps surprisingly, the majority stayed until the bitter end. When André Schürrle scored Germany’s seventh, they rose as one to give their conquerors a standing ovation.

At the final on Sunday in a brand new Maracanã stadium that will not now host a Brazil team at this tournament, such treatment is unlikely to repeated for either Dilma or the Fifa president, Sepp Blatter, when they emerge to hand over the trophy.

In the short term, Scolari’s side must rouse themselves for the third-place play-off in Brasília. Where they – and the 200 million people still trying to come to terms with humiliation on a grand scale in their own backyard – go from there is anyone’s guess.

 

Source: The Guardian, online edition