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With tonight's third-place play-off just a matter of hours away, much of the attention will be on Brazil's response to their 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany in the semi-finals.
While many pundits may point to the 1950 World Cup, in which Brazil lost 2-1 to Uruguay in the final, for the host nation's biggest humiliation, some think last week's capitulation has since replaced it.
However Alex Bellos, writing for The Independent, believes the Brazilian nation saw it coming.
His verdict is nowhere near as damning, for example, as writer Jose Lins do Rego's after that loss in the fifties...
I saw people leave the Maracana with their heads hung low, tears in their eyes, speechless, as if they were returning from the funeral of a loved father. I saw a nation defeated – more than that – one without hope … it stuck in my head that we really were a luckless people … always pursued by bad luck, by the meanness of destiny.
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| Prices correct as of 15 May 2015 |
