We're still not over Germany's epic 7-1 spanking of Brazil, and frankly, the soccer world may never be. The home nation crapped the bed in truly historic fashion, and today dazed observers are combing through the record books to figure out just how historic. The loss is sure to overtake Brazil's 2-1 loss to Uruguay in the 1950 World Cup as the most scarring in the nation's history, writes Jeremy Stahl at Slate—and that game is remembered to this day as the "Maracanã Blow," and occasionally cited as Brazil's Hiroshima or 9/11. Indeed, Stahl believes that every single goal made history. For example:
- 2-0 – This was Miroslav Klose's 16th goal of the tournament, breaking the previous record. The previous record holder? Oh, this hurts: Ronaldo, of Brazil.
- 4-0 – Brazil hadn't given up this many goals in the World Cup since 1954.
- 5-0 – No team had scored this many goals since 1958 (and that time Brazil was the one doing the scoring). It was the fastest any team had ever scored that many, and the third time it ever happened in one half.
- 6-0 – No team had scored this many goals in a semifinal since 1954.
- 7-1 – The final score is the widest margin of defeat in semifinals history.
Nate Silver at
FiveThirtyEight declares it "the most shocking result in World Cup history." By his model, Germany had a roughly one in 4,000 chance of beating Brazil—who Silver had as the favorite—by six goals or more. On ESPN, former German captain Michael Ballack remarked that, "Something like that happens every 100 years," and as Stahl observes, that was not hyperbole. (More
Germany stories.)
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