And they lost.....

They started very well. Throughout the first half Brazil played like a winner. Robinho scored a timely goal and created some opportunity for Kaka who missed two chances. Overall Brazil was on fire. Robinho was hitting top form. There were glimpses of Joga Bonito. Fabiano was colorless though. Then came the second half, a complete goof up between defender and goal keeper and equalizer goal. The story got a dramatic turn from here. Brazil started playing like a looser and conceded another goal to make score 1-2 against them. They started committing too many fouls which eventually saw Felip Melo out of the ground with a red card. With 10 players it was difficult to score another goal. Fabiano was completely out of touch. Dunga sent Milmar which could do very little to bother Holland's defence.

At last Brazil lost and now are out of WC 2010. Did they play very bad in quarter final against Holland? No. Absolutely not. If you see the statistics, ball possession, hit on target, corners in every department they were better than Holland but they lost confidence in second half and that causes them match. Romario in his recent article says it was over confidence but I felt it was a bad strategy to tackle Holland's player Robben which eventually cost them the match. They unnecessarily committed too many fouls against Arjen Robben. Dutch think tank was probably aware of Dunga's strategy to closely mark Robben and they exploited that. Every time Robben was tackled, he fell down on the ground like he got heavily injured.

Lastly even after getting reduced to 10 players, they had chances but no one at forward line could use those opportunity to score an equaliser. Kaka was playing very average. Robinho was playing well but heavily marked. Maicon was good but couldn't create impact. Elano was missing because of injury. Bastos was busy in committing fouls than playing to his potential. Lucio and Juan looked confused after Dutch equalizer.

On other hand Argentina played a very average level match against Germany and lost very badly.