2014 World Cup - RIP Brazil

It's ok. Ask every Kiwi old enough to remember the 1999 Rugby World Cup semi loss to France

8 July 2014.

The day Brazil died as the world's greatest footballing nation.

The Selecao, the team in yellow were once the most feared and respected team in the world's most followed sport.

Only New Zealand's All Blacks enjoyed as much domination and billing in their sport as Brazil's best XI. 

Now Dan Carter, Richie McCaw et al are alone. 

On a warm night in Belo Horizonte, Brazilian football's pride and prestige was brutally and efficiently ripped apart by a side that claimed to be a more fitting tribute to the great Brazil teams of old. 

Brandenburg Gate like the days of yor

Those Germans, so long associated with clinical, efficient yet boring football, played with more flair and guile than Scolari's men have all tournament. 

Neymar and Thiago Silva won't have made any difference. This was a performance that this country of 80 million had been waiting for from this, the new golden generation of Ozil, Goetze, Mueller, Mertesacker, Neuer, etc. It was even better than what the likes of Beckenbauer, Rummenigge, Gerd Muller, Mattheus, Klinsmann had all achieved in the past.

They had after all beaten Brazil at home. Actually, no they had actually thrashed Brazil at home.

Think the All Blacks being humbled 30-0 by France after 20 minutes at Eden Park in the Rugby World Cup Final.

This match will live long in the memory of those who stood and cheered around the big screen at the Brandenburg Gate in Berlin or in front of their televisions or computers around the world. 

If there was any criticism of this World Cup, it was that the storm of goals that had gotten this tournament off to a flying start seemed to have past and that the second round and quarterfinals were bereft of the goalmouth action that had made the first round so watchable.

What also threatened to turn this World Cup into a damp squib was the lack of a genuine all star team emerging just when the tournament should be hitting its climax. 

After this 7-1 mauling, the biggest winning margin in any semifinal of a major football tournament, and against a side who hadn't lost at home since 1975 - and their biggest defeat ever in a competitive match, the Germans can now lay claim to be that star team everyone was waiting for.

Now everyone will be hoping that it'll be a team with the star player to make it a potentially magnificent final in Rio.