Brazil 2014: The Mineiraço, the 7-1 that nobody saw coming and Götze's goal in the 113th minute
- El Mineirazo was the humiliating 7-1 thrashing that Brazil received on its own territory, an unexpected result that marked a before and after in the 2014 FIFA World Cup
- No one saw this Brazilian debacle coming, being one of the most impactful surprises in the history of world football during a tournament played at home
- Mario Götze scored the winning goal for Germany in the 113th minute, sealing qualification to the final with a decisive goal in extra time
Brazil was hosting a World Cup sixty-four years after the Maracanã disaster, hoping finally to heal that wound. What happened instead was that an even worse one opened up.
🇧🇷 The 2014 World Cup by the numbers
- Host
- Brazil
- Teams
- 32
- Champions
- 🏆 Germany
- Runners-up
- Argentina
- Final
- Germany 1-0 (AET) Argentina
- Stadium
- Maracanã · Rio de Janeiro
- Attendance
- 74,738
- Top scorer
- James Rodríguez (Colombia), 6 goals
The Mineiraço
8 July, Belo Horizonte, semi-final. Brazil arrived without Neymar, injured in the back during the quarter-finals, and without Thiago Silva, suspended. The stadium wept during the anthem while holding Neymar's shirt.
Germany scored in the 11th minute. And then, between the 23rd and 29th minutes, they added four more. Five in eighteen minutes. At half-time it was 0-5.
In the second half came 0-6 and 0-7. Óscar scored a consolation goal in the 90th. 1-7.
What was most baffling was the ending: a large portion of the Maracanã — sorry, the Mineirão — applauded Germany. And something even stranger: the German players, already five goals up, stopped celebrating out of respect.
And Spain, knocked out at the group stage
The defending world champions opened against the Netherlands, the same opponent from the 2010 final. They went 1-0 up through an Xabi Alonso penalty and lost 1-5, with Van Persie's impossible diving header that went viral.
Then they lost 2-0 to Chile and were already eliminated after just two matches. They won the third game against Australia just to save face. It was the end of the finest generation this country has ever produced.
The final
13 July, Maracanã. Germany versus Argentina, the third final between the two sides. Argentina had the clearest chances — Higuaín found himself clean through and blazed it over — Germany controlled the game, and in the 113th minute Mario Götze came off the bench, controlled a Schürrle cross on his chest and finished with a left-footed volley.
Messi, who was named the tournament's best player, walked past the trophy on his way to the dressing room without looking at it. That image again.
That Neymar's absence, injured in the quarter-finals, explains the hammering.
That it helps explain the atmosphere, not the result. A team doesn't concede five goals in eighteen minutes because it's missing a striker: what we saw was a collective collapse, with the defence in shreds and midfield overrun on every play. Tactical analysis afterwards shows that Brazil had been playing badly all tournament and covering it up with drama: they'd scraped past Chile on penalties and Colombia with real difficulty. The absence of Thiago Silva, the centre-back and captain, suspended, probably weighed more than Neymar's.
That Miroslav Klose is the greatest goalscorer in World Cup history.
That it's true: in that 1-7 he scored his 16th goal and surpassed Brazilian Ronaldo, who had 15. The irony wrote itself: he did it in Brazil, against Brazil, on the darkest night in Brazilian football. Klose spread those 16 goals across four World Cups, from 2002 to 2014. The record still stands.
That the 1-7 surpassed the pain of the 1950 defeat.
That in Brazil there's no consensus, and those who lived through both tend to say the opposite. The 1-7 was more humiliating on the pitch; the Maracanaço was more painful because it came when the country already thought itself champion, in front of 200,000 people and in a final. There was also a crucial difference: in 2014 Brazil was still a five-time champion; in 1950 they hadn't won anything yet. The comparison works well in the headlines and poorly in reality.
What it left behind
It left behind technology: 2014 introduced the goal-line technology, the one that should have been there since 1966. It left behind the first European victory on American soil — no European team had ever won a World Cup in America. And it left behind a thrashing that in Brazil is still spoken of carefully.
- The photos from the final come from photographers with Creative Commons licences and from Agência Brasil, via Wikimedia Commons.
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