Placing Neymar before country: Where Brazil went terribly wrong

It is 24 hours to the semifinal against Germany and you don’t have two of your best players available — one out due to injury and the other due to an idiotic challenge on the Colombian goalkeeper David Ospina* as he was in the process of kicking the ball out of his area. It’s time to regroup, time to strategise, time to prove that Brazil is still as good, time to put on that game-face and come out like bulls from their pens. [caption id=“attachment_1609873” align=“alignleft” width=“380”] Luiz holds up Neymar’s jersey during the national anthem. Reuters[/caption] But all we saw and read about in the run up to one of the biggest games of the World Cup was this: The plans of fans who would wear Neymar masks — transforming the stadium into a Neymar-sea. A  poem called ‘Neymar and our destiny’ on the sports page of a popular newspaper on the day of the game.  Neymar’s video message to his fans being played again and again — how his dream of being a champion continues, his image of waving into the camera as he was airlifted back home, a psychologist helping the team cope after watching their star break a vertebrae. Then there were the reactions and tributes: Brazil’s president calling him ‘a great warrior’ , Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari saying how he’s asked Neymar to come watch the game (thankfully that didn’t happen) and how he’d asked his players to win it for him . The Brazil football federation posting images of the team queuing up for a photo where they were all making a sign Neymar’s friends used to make, images of Brazil’s team in the swimming pool making the same sign, images of Brazil’s team in ‘_Forca Neyma_r’ (Be strong Neymar) caps and finally, as if it was not enough — skipper David Luiz and keeper Julio Cesar holding a Neymar shirt between them during the national anthem before the match against Germany. And after all this… the disastrous 1-7 loss. Brazil treated the match like a testimonial and it got them a testimonial scoreline. If only Brazil had  realised that the real tribute to Neymar would have been to win the World Cup or at least play to the best of their abilities. To do that however, they needed to be in the zone. The Brazilian camp constantly gave out distress signals of their inability to swim without Neymar — of their wounds and their weaknesses. It seemed like Brazil was solely concentrating on how to win for a teammate, not for their countrymen — for a star who is far from being in the prime of his career (and has not achieved anything great yet) rather than for people who have seen their bus fares hiked and houses claimed to stage a World Cup from which they have now been ruthlessly kicked out. [caption id=“attachment_1609879” align=“alignleft” width=“620”] A Neymar mask, lonely in the stands after the Germany loss. Reuters[/caption] Till the match started, Brazil was just about Neymar — it is excusable for fans to get carried away like that, but not for the team. They should have zipped their emotions in their kit-bags and walked out as Brazil — not as a Brazil clinging onto Neymar’s identity. They should have walked out as the best XI, not as the remaining best — they should have walked out as the proudest team in World Cup history, not as a team whose pride rested in winning for their best player. But Brazil walked out as a team struggling without their poster-boy — and if they thought the presence of his empty jersey at the start of the match will help them overpower Germany through sheer emotion — then the whole world knows how wrong they were. * This story originally incorrectly identified Colombian goalkeeper David Ospina as Keylor Navas. The error has been corrected.