Tonight we have been witness to a pretty historic football match. Never mind the fact that they were without two of their star players, the World Cup home nation were well and truly humbled this evening by an impressive display from the Germans.
Strangely, despite it feeling like the right result, on reflection I do feel a great deal of pity for some of the Brazilian players - the weight of expectation from a nation brought up on beautiful football and a well-stocked trophy cabinet, and you fall apart badly, shipping four goals in eight dreadful minutes in the first half, and end up on the wrong end of all sorts of records, losing 7-1. Already the questions are being asked of how long will it take these players to recover from this, and, like the 1950 team, will they ever recover?
Well, whilst the Brazilian national football set-up might have some soul-searching to do, I hope that they do all recover, and soon.
Meanwhile, unless Holland can stick a hat-full of goals past Argentina tomorrow (and there's my prediction for an all European final), Germany have to be hot favourites for Sunday now.