Oh please, when I was young the Brazilians played the best and the prettiest football around by a comfortable margin, in the past decade under Dunga and Scolari they've made a point of kicking teams off the pitch whenever things didn't go their way.
Read Zico's article on the Guardian. And please, stop implying that anyone who doesn't see things your way suffers from a mental problem, I don't want you to descend to ReindeerThistle's depths.
I know you're not that old. To remember "pretty football Brazil" you would need to have been born in the 1970's or before. Truth is Brazil abandoned the "pretty" and mostly offensive football after 1982 (not 1986 as some people erroneously believe) because it simply did not win anymore. For all it's merits, the 1982 Seleção had some bizarre defensive blunders that are totally out place in modern football. Those who suggest "Brazil go back to 1982 style" either don't know what they're talking about (most often the case) or are suggesting in a PC way that Brazil go back to entertaining everyone but then losing every time and making way to "pragmatic" teams. Brazil went through a deep restructuring, and the "Era of the Defensive Midfielders" did not begin with Scolari in 2002, but rather was at full swing in 1990. So I wonder if that is the pretty football you mentioned? Because 1990 Brazil is widely regarded as the ugliest Brazilian football ever, and 1994 wasn't that much better (save for the genius of Romário). The victory at 1994 consecrated the Defensive Midfielder strategy / mentality, which reached it's apex in 2010 under Dunga and has since been slowly declining. 2014 Brazil is actually "prettier" and "less dirty" than 2010 Brazil. There's no Felipe Melo, an all-out thug whose job was to beat up our opponents, in 2014 Brazil. That we're not doing so good this WC should not detract from that.
Of course, for all your vitriol about Scolari's teams "kicking teams off the pitch", even at it's worst with Dunga the Brazilian team didn't even approach the heights of dirty football and tactical fouling as mastered by Argentina and Uruguay, who have really made hard fouls committed under the ref's radar into an art form.
I agree with Vickery (who is a rare example of an excellent BBC football writer) - Brazil got away with countless fouls all night, they wiped out James Rodriguez every time they got the ball, and they barely received any punishment from the ref. The ref was unbelievably biased towards Brazil. Just terrible referring.
Anyway I agree that Neymar's injury was tragic but Brazil are hardly saints... They played some ugly football that night, and I can't get behind them any more than I could get behind Atletico Madrid in the UCL final. Way worse than diving if you ask me.
Nobody is saying Brazil are saints. I don't think any Brazilian, here or anywhere else, has analysed that game as "poor Brazilians being constantly beaten by thuggish Colombians". That's just not what happened, and any talk of that game must recognize that Brazil fouled often and embraced tactical fouling as a strategy. But Vickery is full of crap. I already challenged anyone here to produce a picture of any foul committed on Rodriguez or any other Colombian that even approached the severity of what Zuniga did to Hulk's knee on the first half or, much worse, to Neymar's back on the second. There's a difference between fouling all the time, even with dirty anti-football fouls aimed at killing the play, and to go all-out with clear intent to cause injury. Look at that picture of Zuniga's strike against Hulk's knee and tell me the intent was not to injure. That's why FIFA's medical committee has asked that he be severely punished. That's why he will be punished, but not anyone else on either side. He deserved a red card on the first half after trying unsuccessfully to break Hulk, and didn't get a yellow even after successfully breaking Neymar. So it's very hard, indeed impossible, to argue the ref favored Brazil. I don't think he favored Colombia either, he simply screwed up, and the result ended up being worse for Brazil because of Zuniga's assault.
Vickers narrative of the game with Chile is even more full of crap. His narrative, which borders on the cartoonish, is that Brazil started playing dirty on Chile and they, the poor kids who just wanted to have some fun, had no alternative other than to "fight back" and hunt Neymar (they almost got him out of the game against Colombia). I wonder if he saw the game at all.
Chile committed the first fouls of the game! The first half, all the way to the Chilean equalizer towards the end, was marked by Brazilian dominance and constant attacks, with Chile fouling all the time to stop them, sometimes pretty hard indeed (see the strike on Neymar that he mentioned). Only in the second half, when Chile was playing better, did Brazil start fouling all the time. So Vickers made up a narrative to support his point. That's called bad journalism.
Do you think Neuer is handsome?
