Schurrle grabs a brace as seven-goal Germany take Brazil to the cleaners

Germany 7, Brazil 1.  Hands up if you saw this one coming.

If you put your hand up, put it down and stop lying!  What we saw transpire during these 90 minutes cannot possibly have been predicted even by the most hopeful of Germany fans or the most pessimistic of Brazil fans or basically anybody else without a time machine.

Germany uh... well... absolutely blitzed Brazil to the tune of five goals in eighteen first-half minutes, including one from Miroslav Klose that made him the all-time leader in World Cup goals with 16.  Then Andre Schurrle added a couple more for good measure in the second half, including one of exceedingly stellar quality.

Attempting analyze any individual performances is an almost impossible, mostly useless task.  For Brazil, it's one to forget and forget quickly.  To a man, they were poor, undisciplined, shapeless, appalling, and, later, frustrated and uncaring.  Let's be generous and say that perhaps they tried too hard, they wanted it too much, figured it was their destiny, got carried away in the moment and the passion and the occasion and never recovered.

David Luiz may have lost Thomas Muller for the opener and the one that opened the floodgates, but it's hardly fair to point fingers just at him.  Or Dante.  Or Fred.  Or Oscar.  Or even Fernandinho.  Or anybody else in a yellow shirt.  As the ESPN announcers repeated, they basically threw in the towel.  It truly was amateur hour from top to bottom, and even substitutes Ramires and Willian didn't manage to rise above the general level of utter headless insanity on display from the hosts.  The few moments of genuine quality that they did manage to produce (mostly in the first few and the last few minutes of the second half), Manuel Neuer denied all but one of them.  Oscar's effort in the final minute rounded out the scoring: a consolation goal that hardly spared their blushes.

It's hard not to be impressed by Germany, glorious and powerful and entertaining once again.  Though they must now resist falling into a similar trap of overconfidence as they move on to their eighth World Cup final, where they will face the winner of Argentina and the Netherlands.  Should be a classic match-up either way, but hopefully a bit more of a closer contest than this one.