Updated July 8, 2014 11:27 p.m. ET
Brazil's Fernandinho reacts after Germany's Toni Kroos scored his side's third goal. Associated Press
Belo Horizonte, Brazil
Brazil's ambitious and optimistic national campaign to win the World Cup on home soil for the first time didn't just end Tuesday. It fell to pieces as if there had been nothing holding it together in the first place.
In a 7-1 loss to Germany, the Seleção—as Brazil's national team is known—was humiliated so thoroughly that the 58,000 fans inside the Estádio Mineirão seemed to be in a state of emotional paralysis before halftime.
Germany's 7-to-1 victory over Brazil in the 2014 World Cup semifinal is one for the history books. WSJ's Geoff Foster looks at how the stats compare to past World Cups.
Photos
Germany's second goal is scored by Miroslav Klose during the 2014 World Cup semifinal against Brazil. Reuters
Goal by goal, the Germans rewrote Brazilian soccer history. The Seleção hadn't lost a competitive game on home soil since 1975. It hadn't conceded as many as four goals in a World Cup game since 1954. And it goes without saying that no team has ever given up seven goals in a World Cup semifinal.
At the end of the first breathless half, the score was 5-0, at which point the home fans booed and whistled their team off the field. These were the same canary yellow-and-green-clad men and women who sang the national anthem at every other Brazil game with such booming gusto that they added the second verse a cappella.
"This is a catastrophic, terrible loss, the worst of a Brazilian national team," Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari said in a postgame news conference-turned-apology. After leading the team to the 2002 world title—Brazil's record fifth—Scolari can now claim to have taken Brazil to its lowest moment. In a shockingly raw televised interview, Brazil defender David Luiz, eyes red-rimmed and welling with tears, apologized for the failure.
It was a Brazilian team playing without Neymar, its attacking star and celebrity lodestone. The Seleção also took the field without Thiago Silva, its inspirational captain and defensive leader.
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A Brazil fan reacts to her team's loss. European Pressphoto Agency
Germany's rout ended Brazil's dream of a World Cup championship. Agence France-Presse/Getty Images
These absences had raised the very real prospect that some other country would be partying after the final in Rio de Janeiro on July 13. All the discontent Brazilians felt about spending $11.5 billion to host the tournament threatened to come flowing back. A year ago, when Brazil hosted the Confederations Cup, which acts as a dress rehearsal for the World Cup, there had been riots—and Brazil won that tournament.
What unfolded Tuesday guaranteed that 2014 could rival 1950 as Brazilian soccer's darkest year. On that occasion at the fourth-ever World Cup, Brazil went into the final game against Uruguay needing only a draw to win its first title, which it saw as its birthright. But as the Maracanã Stadium prepared for a national celebration, Uruguay silenced the crowd with a 2-1 victory.
Even after five World Cup successes, the 64-year-old disaster still stings here. Although for the generations that don't remember it, Tuesday's demolition will likely take its place as a milestone soccer tragedy.
"I think it was the worst day of my life," said Scolari, 65.
Brazil rode into the game on a wave of emotion. The team arrived at the stadium wearing hats to support Neymar, who is recovering from a fractured vertebra sustained in the quarterfinal against Colombia. They carried his jersey out for yet another belting of the national anthem. During warm-ups, Silva made a point of hugging each of his teammates on the field to offer a leader's advice.
Germany had no sympathy. Die Nationalmannschaft exposed Brazil for what it had been all along: a deeply flawed soccer team. The five-week party here and the optimism of 200 million fans had obscured the cracks—overreliance on a single star, a wobbly defense and a physical style that could never shake the Germans.
As the Brazilian defense crumbled, it was quickly apparent that Silva was a far bigger loss to the team than Neymar. The Seleção tried to attack, but Germany was deadly on the break.
Germany's Sami Khedira scores against Brazil at the Mineirao stadium in Belo Horizonte. Reuters
"Everyone was organized until the moment of the first goal," Scolari, the Brazilian coach, said, referring to Thomas Müller's 11th-minute opener. "Then we got a little bit of panic and everything went bad for us."
For the record—before the list is banned by law in Brazil—the rundown of German goal-scorers included Müller, Toni Kroos (two), Sami Khedira, Andre Schurrle (two) and Miroslav Klose. In another small humiliation, Klose's goal was his 16th career World Cup goal, passing the mark set by Brazilian legend Ronaldo.
By the end of the game, the atmosphere became surreal. Brazilian fans celebrated Oscar's 90th-minute goal, which closed the gap to 7-1, as if they had taken the lead. They kept singing until the bloodshed ended. Schurrle even remembered them applauding him.
"We were looking at each other and couldn't believe it," he said.
Now Germany, which reached its eighth World Cup final, awaits the winner of Wednesday's game between the Netherlands and Argentina. Brazil must pick itself up for one more indignity—the third-place match in Brasilia on Saturday.
The World Cup trophy, meanwhile, will be handed over on Sunday in Rio inside the Maracanã, where Brazil saw it slip away in 1950 and coined the word Maracanazo to mean disaster. But in what will be the last Brazilian World Cup for decades, the Seleção's players won't have the chance to go back and lift the curse.
In Belo Horizonte, the curse came to them.
Write to Joshua Robinson at joshua.robinson@wsj.com
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