“It started, innocently enough, in the 11th minute. Thomas Müller, Germany’s top scorer at this World Cup, slyly slid around the back of Brazil’s defense. When the ball arrived from a corner kick, he blasted it home. The Brazilian fans who made up most of the crowd of 58,000 went quiet for a moment. But then, unbowed, they resumed their defiant chants. In Ceilândia, some 450 miles north of the Estádio Mineirão, a housecleaner shrugged. ‘After the first goal, our reaction was not too much of a shock because Germany is a strong competitor,’ said the housecleaner, Neide Moura de Brito do Nascimento, who was watching on TV with her family. ‘We already expected one or two goals from them.’ Nothing else about Tuesday afternoon followed anyone’s expectations. From that modest beginning, this country went on to witness something never seen before in World Cup soccer: Germany scored five goals — more than many teams scored in the entire tournament — in the first 29 minutes of a World Cup semifinal on the way to a 7-1 victory. Those 29 minutes will be scrutinized for generations in Brazil, poked and prodded and dissected the way Brazil’s dreaded defeat to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup final has been.” NY Times (Video)
