So, Brazil and Germany in the semifinals tonight. Perhaps the most anticipated match so far of the 2014 World Cup. Between them, eight World Cup championships. Brazil pretty much ordered to win their sixth, on home soil; Germany good enough to win the whole thing, too, even if they trailed Ghana in the second half back in the group stage.

A midnight start here, and I was doing fine right up through the anthems, when Brazil’s guy shouted their anthem, and even the little kids who came out holding the hands of the players were shouting, too.

(And have you noticed that all the South American anthems sound like the first few bars of the overture to a really bad/obscure opera? Ten bars of introduction, and then everyone sings.)

I was still hanging in there when Germany’s Thomas Muller (tell me he doesn’t look like Jurgen Prochnow of Das Boot) scored in the 11th minute, and I think Miroslav Klose’s record goal came before I lost consciousness … and certainly, things did not look good for Brazil, but lots of time left, still, even without the injured Neymar … zzzzz.

And the next time I looked up … it was late in the game, and I glanced at the score/time box in the upper-left corner of the Univision broadcast and saw a zero and some other number. It didn’t look like a 2, exactly, but it had to be. Couldn’t be a 7. Not in soccer, unless I was coaching one of the teams involved.

And then I looked more closely, and perhaps rubbed my eyes and looked again … and it was still a 7.

As in: Germany 7, Brazil 0 … and a big mind-boggling “what the hell”?

Brazil got a goal a minute from the end, then the whole team collapsed on the pitch.

I stayed with Univision long enough to see every goal recapped and re-recapped, and the ease of the Germans scoring in the first half, especially the four goals in six minutes … was astonishing.

First, some links to good stuff in The National, and then my theory of what happened.

–Our own Gary Meenaghan, in Belo Horizonte, with a match report including Brazil’s coach calling it “the worst moment of my life”.

–Own own Gary Meenaghan in a comment/analysis piece in which he looks more closely at the six minutes that turned a 1-0 game into a 5-0 Brazilian national disaster. As Gary wrote: “Put another way, goalkeeper Julio Cesar had to pick the ball out of his net, on average, every 90 seconds for six straight minutes. A nation’s dreams were destroyed in less time than it takes to boil an egg.”

Also, Eisa Ahmed, a defender for local club Al Wahda as well as the UAE national team, sat with contributor Omar Al Raisi and dissected the match as it happened, and that can be seen here. Eisa pretty much lays the blame of the blowout defeat to the guys on the left side of the Brazil formation, and specifically the winger Marcelo, for not tracking back, for not marking anyone, for thinking about attacking before they had even settled into the game. (Hulk comes in for some criticism, too.)

But I believe, in the grand scheme, it was of those odd situations of a team wide emotional/spiritual crisis.

When Brazil’s team collapsed almost all at once. When they stopped believing, and then stopped performing and found even the most basic of soccer actions difficult if not impossible, and Germany just kept doing what they do and there came the goals — bang, bang, bang, bang, bang.

We had seen warning signs of imminent collapse.

After the shootout victory over Chile, several Brazil players were seen weeping on the pitch. Neymar, for sure. David Luiz, too. Some others. And they had just won, albeit in a nerve-racking shootout.

The next day, Scolari mentioned that he was going to recall the team psychologist to chat with the lads anew, and see if they could allay some of their fears and tensions …

And then they played Colombia in the quarterfinals, in an ugly, chippy game widely derided among soccer cognoscenti and put forward as proof that this was not the “jogo bonito” of Brazil teams past (though no one I know actually ever saw them when they didn’t play soccer as much as “dance” it). Like, in 1966, thereabouts.

Instead, it was deemed “jogo feio” – or the ugly game — and (I swear this is true) nearly every football writer in England decided he wanted the Germans to win an important match, which may never have happened in the history of the world.

Anyway, it was all too much for the Brazilians, who were fairly young and clearly mentally fragile, and now what?

If you live in Brazil, what is your thing? Soccer. You are better at it than anyone. It is athletic and it is art, and we are the masters. I mean, our government is corrupt, and the weather in much of the country is awful, and poverty is widespread and racism is an issue … and now we aren’t any good in soccer, either?

How do you get up the next day?

Anyway, about 2 billion soccer fans watched and perhaps did not believe their own lying eyes, as Germany ran up a 7-0 lead and won 7-1. That doesn’t happen at a World Cup. Not unless North Korea or Honduras are involved. Certainly not when Germany and Brazil are sharing the pitch.

Yes, it really was 7-0. Even in the middle of the night, without my glasses.