00:00The player's knee smashed into his spine and the moment it did, Neymar collapsed onto the pitch
00:05in agony. The referee let the game play on, but as the Colombians fouled Brazil once again
00:10and the play finally stopped, Neymar was still writhing on the ground in pain. It was the first
00:15time Brazil had hosted the World Cup since 1950, and before this incident it was looking like they
00:21might finally have a chance to redeem themselves for their failure 64 years earlier. See, during
00:26the 1950 World Cup, Brazil was on an absolute tear. They'd made it all the way to the final stage
00:32and
00:33oddly enough, in their final game they only needed a draw against Uruguay to win the entire tournament.
00:39It was the first and only time in World Cup history that the final was decided with a four-team
00:45final
00:45group stage rather than a traditional single elimination knockout. They'd completely annihilated
00:51the other two countries in the final group stage 7-1 and 6-1, while Uruguay had barely scraped
00:56by with a 3-2 win and a 2-2 draw. But when Uruguay then staged a devastating comeback and
01:03embarrassed
01:03Brazil on their own home turf in front of the world, it had shocked the country to its core.
01:08So in 2014, as they led the World Cup quarter-final match against Colombia 2-1 in the final minutes
01:14of
01:14the game, the Brazilian fans were nervous to see their best player and key goalscorer, Neymar,
01:20being carried off the field on a stretcher. The clash had fractured Neymar's vertebra, wiping him out of
01:25the tournament and, according to his doctor, nearly paralyzing him. The Brazilian team continued
01:30fighting and they did pull off the win against Colombia, but without their top goalscorer and
01:35with their captain and central defender, Thiago Silva, also missing from the team after getting
01:39his second yellow card of the tournament with this stupid foul on Colombia's goalkeeper, the Brazilian
01:45team were a shell of their former selves as they headed into the semi-final match against Germany.
01:50They did have some lingering hope. At that point in time, Brazil hadn't been beaten in a competitive
01:55match at home in 39 years. But it didn't take long for those hopes to be completely and utterly
02:02destroyed. The first goal from Germany came 11 minutes into the game, and the second goal came
02:0712 minutes after that, from Germany's Miroslav Klosser. It was his 16th career World Cup goal,
02:14breaking the record for the most goals scored by a single player in World Cup history. A record
02:19previously held by Brazil's very own Ronaldo. For the next six minutes, Germany scored again and again
02:25and again. In the second half of the game, the bloodbath continued. Two more goals for Germany,
02:30bringing the score to a depressing 7-0. In the 90th minute of the game, Brazil managed to finally score
02:37what was potentially the saddest, most pointless last-minute consolation goal. Brazil had once again
02:43failed catastrophically in front of the world on their own home turf. And still today,
02:48Gol de Alemanha has become a Brazilian slang phrase for moments in life when bad news uncontrollably
02:54cascades with no ending in sight.
