Milito: Brazil’s most painful defeat of all time

Diego Milito believes the margin of Brazil’s drubbing against Germany in the World Cup semi-final could have a lasting effect, arguing that it was “the most painful defeat of all time”.

The World Cup hosts have to pick themselves up for the third-place play-off game against Holland on Saturday following the 7-1 loss, but Milito believes the fall-out from that devastating night in Belo Horizonte will continue.

“It’s a huge margin of defeat and it’s a result that will feature prominently in football history books in future,” said Milito, Sony’s Team Ambassador covering Argentina. “It will go down as perhaps the most painful defeat of all time.”

Brad Friedel, our USA Team Ambassador, also predicts quite an inquest. “There will be a before and after that night’s result. It’s not the same to lose 1-0 as it is to lose 7-1,” said Freidel. “There will come a time when teams won’t make the mistake of playing as open as Brazil did, knowing that their rival is superior. They’ll try to close it up at the back.

“Like most people I was pretty astonished. The teams who have had some success against Germany are the ones who have had a good defensive structure for the first 20-25 minutes of the game – and then tried to expose the weakness in Germany, which is their speed in defence.

“Brazil went to attack from second one and they paid the price. I’ve also said I like this German team more when Philipp Lahm plays at right-back instead of in the centre, but that shouldn’t mean that Germany is six goals better than Brazil.”