There was a marked difference between the Brazilian and British coverage on the Brazilian soccer defeat of 1-7 against Germany.
The Brazilian sport daily Lance called the crushing loss of Brazil against Germany “The Biggest Shame in History.” “The Maracanazo becomes nothing and literally a thing of the past,” the newspaper said on its website.
Newspapers and TV commentators called the defeat the “Mineirazo,” an allusion to the Mineirao Stadium in Belo Horizonte and Brazil’s traumatic Word Cup defeat at home in 1950 known as the “Maracanazo.”
Brazil’s President Dilma Rousseff added to the gloom.
“Like every Brazilian, I am very, very sad about this defeat. I am immensely sorry for all of us. Fans and our players,” she wrote on Twitter.
Brazil’s national media dubbed the team’s record loss – equal to a 6-0 defeat by Uruguay in 1920 – the “Shame of Shames”.
Spanish sports paper Marca wrote: “The Germans … can lay claim that Tuesday night’s beat-down of Brazil is the most dominating performance in World Cup history. Adding to the indignity of it all, the crowd shouted ‘Ole!’ with each completed German pass to complete the darkest hour in the history of Brazilian football.”
The British nevertheless still tried very hard to sell their multicultural melting pot ideology to the losers by pretending to be heartbroken over their loss.
In the Daily Mirror, Martin Lipton, himself a wreck, “feared” for a football nation.
“In shame. In humiliation. In tears of utter shock, disbelief, disrepair, records rewritten for all the wrong reasons.
“The hearts of a nation of 200 million people were not just broken here in the Estadio Mineirao last night.
They were smashed into a billion tiny pieces. Irreparably.”
Other British commentators had similar pronouncements to make. “It was simply too much. Too brutal, Too excruciating. Too painful to watch,” cried Martin Samuel in the Daily Mail.
“Six minutes of football that would live in the memory — Brazil 0 Germany 1, to Brazil 0 Germany 5. In six minutes. Six minutes. It needed repeating, digesting. There has never been a World Cup semi-final like this.”
Brazil invested $11 billion to host this tournament.