It was not so spectacular as the last time it went out of a major tournament; this was not a defeat that will be remember as long as football is played, as the 7-1 calamity against Germany in last year’s World Cup semi-final will be. But in its own way, Brazil’s exit from the Copa America was just as crushing. This was a dismal, undistinguished campaign ended -- as Brazil’s Copa America campaign had been in Argentina four years ago -- by Paraguay’s greater aptitude from penalties after the two sides played to a 1-1 draw.
After Derlis Gonzalez had rolled home his decisive penalty in the shootout to complement his equalizer in normal time, the air popped with the sound of locals fans bursting their inflatable clapper sticks. Each one was the bursting of a bubble of Brazlian pretension. While the defeat in Belo Horizonte could be dismissed as a freak occurrence, this match could not. Brazilian football is in a very glum place, and it increasingly looks as though Dunga is not the man to save it.
Every now and again, Brazil produced a moment that offered a flicker of its capabilities. You remembered that this is Brazil, the team whose name for years was almost a trademark for attractive football. Those moments are few and far between now, though.
Paraguay had begun brightly - nobody fears Brazil any more, the aura it once had has gone – and had Roque Santa Cruz produced a better ball for Nelson Haedo Valdez after being slipped through by Gonzalez, it might have had a 10th-minute lead. That miss seemed at the time a desperate waste: the sort of chance a team has to take against Brazil. As it was, it turned out simply to be an indicator of Brazil's vulnerability.
As it was, Brazil took the lead after 15 minutes with its first -- and, it would turn out, only -- decent passing move of the game. It started with the resurgent Robinho, a player who looks far better at 31 than he has for the past decade, and finished by him too, Roberto Firmino stepping over (if we’re being kind; he might just have miskicked) Dani Alves’s cross to allow the Santos forward to slam the ball into the top corner. Pleasing as the move was, though, Paraguay’s defending was worse than questionable with Eduardo Aranda failing to pick up Robinho’s run.
But it was just a glimmer. Robinho’s shot was the only touch Brazil had in Paraguay’s box in the first half. Every now and again there would be five or six passes strung together, a series of flicks and neat touches that would generate a murmuring sense of menace, but they were rare.
If Paraguay had had more quality and more attacking ideas than punting it forward and seeing what happened, Brazil might have struggled. It was grim, grinding stuff -- the contrast to the previous night’s high-tempo percussion between Argentina and Colombia profound -- so bad that when a haze of smoke settled over the ground midway through the first half, it seemed as though some benevolent celestial director were attempting to improve matters by casting it all in soft focus.
Yet limited as it was, Paraguay caused Brazil problems. Jefferson had to be alert to beat away a free-kick from Gonzalez that was whipped to the near post. Roque Santa Cruz headed a corner just over. And then, just as the game seemed to be drifting inevitably to Brazilian progress, Thiago Silva handled inside his own area. Gonzalez gleefully swept his spot kick into the corner -- to the delight of most of the Chileans who made up the majority of the 29,000 crowd.
Perhaps it’s simply that Chile has a terrible record against Brazil and they’d rather see them out, but the response also showed the respect that Brazilian football was once held in all over the world has been diluted: Dunga’s side is unpopular because it offers so little that is joyful.
Four years ago, Brazil missed all four of its kicks. It did at least improve on that here. But Everton Ribeiro, brought on for Robinho to take a penalty, skewed his kick horribly, then another substitute, Douglas Costa, fired over. Those missteps meant Paraguay could afford Roque Santa Cruz’s miss. Gonzalez, as he had to equalize, took his opportunity and the finalists of four years ago will face Argentina in Tuesday’s semi-final.
