The way the medical staff casually dumped him on the stretcher and then bumped him around as they jogged off, is not the way fractured vertebraes are usually treated... sounds a bit dodgy to me.

Brazil had a lot more fouls then Colombia. They even said before the game that there intent was to get physical. They set up the game to be played this way and this is exactly what occurred. Neymar's injury was a result of there style of play.

Lost among the hyperbole and sense of mourning over the loss of Neymar to the 2014 FIFA World Cup, is the uncomfortable reality that the host nation may have brought it upon itself with its continued and controversial use of 'tactical fouling'.
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By Tim Vickery
7 JUL 2014 - 3:09 AM UPDATED 1 HOUR AGO

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After the cruel injury that keeps Neymar out of the rest of the World Cup, Brazil has become a country in mourning – and also a country in denial.

Camilo Zuniga, the Colombian right back whose ill judged lunge caused Neymar's injury, has become public enemy number one. As I write, Brazil's most famous football commentator has just described it as one of the most violent moments in the history of the game. The Brazilian FA is in the process of asking FIFA to give Zuniga a huge ban.

At this time, with the poster boy out of action, reality has been thrown out of the window.

Saturday's edition of 'Lance!' – Brazil's usually excellent sports daily – makes a sole passing reference to the wider context. "Curiously," says one article, "Brazil committed more fouls than Colombia – 31 against 23." This fact is presented as if it were some statistical quirk. But really it is part of a plan.

It is all very well for Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari to complain that Neymar was being hunted on the field. The hunting started from his side. This is an unfortunate part of the contemporary Brazilian game. It is called tactical fouling. Its aim is to prevent the opposition gaining any fluency in possession by repeatedly interrupting the game with fouls.

I well recall being in the stadium for the final of the 2007 Copa America. Brazil, with an understrength side, pulled off a surprise by beating Argentina 3-0. It was a clinical counter-attacking triumph. But, up against a team with the likes of Riquelme, Veron and a young Lionel Messi, Brazil opened up its tool box and committed around 45 fouls.

Last year's Confederations Cup final against Spain was another resounding 3-0 win for Brazil, with some superb Neymar moments along the way. But the Spanish were entitled to a little grumble about the persistent fouling by their opponent – Brazil committed 26 fouls in that game, five fewer than its total against Colombia.

If any player was hunted on the field at Fortaleza last Saturday (AEST) it was the number ten of Colombia, James Rodriguez. Again and again he was on the end of vicious fouls from Brazil midfielder Fernandinho, who appeared to be acting to a plan to intimidate his opponent out of the game. And the referee did nothing.

The danger signs were there in Brazil's previous match against Chile. Right at the start Fernandinho flew into a late tackle. It was a clear yellow card. None was awarded. This leniency has been so prevalent that we can only assume the referees are acting on some kind of FIFA directive. It would seem that the world governing body, understandably, does not want to see too many players suspended, which might devalue its showpiece competition. Even Lionel Messi has been fortunate to escape punishment for the occasional petulant challenge or reaction.

This style of refereeing is very dangerous in a game involving two South American sides. After Fernandinho had got away with his bad tackle against Chile, it was clear that Chile would react. If Brazil was going to have a free one, then so would Chile – and it was also clear who the victim would be. Charles Aranguiz slid in with a tackle on Neymar which reduced the effectiveness of the young Brazilian in the match and briefly threatened his participation against Colombia.

In other words, Brazil had received a warning – do not go out to hunt lest you be hunted. It did not heed that warning. It tried to kick James Rodriguez out of the game, and the outcome is that Neymar has been kicked out of the World Cup.
It is very sad for him, for his team and for the tournament. But the sad, and surely unavoidable truth is that Brazil is reaping what it has sown – and as a proud owner of 1982 Brazil shirt, that is a desperately despondent sentence to be forced to write.

By Les Murray
7 JUL 2014 - 6:21 AM UPDATED 1 HOUR AGO


The way this nation of 200 million revelled on the evening Brazil played its quarter-final against Colombia had to be experienced to be believed.

The string of kiosks and cafes along the Avenida Atlantica, Copacabana's promenade, was a pulsating heave of noise, rhythms, yellow shirts, caipirinhas and beer. The sounds of the samba in each bar were turned up at half time as people danced and sang, only to then re-focus on the TV screens once the game resumed. It was all so wonderful, helped of course by the fact that Brazil led on the scoreboard almost throughout the process.

But something just had to take the gloss off it all and that was Zuniga's knee thundering into the back of the World Cup's poster boy and chief attraction.


Why is it that football, a thing of such beauty, has to have its brutishly ugly elements? Or is that part of its very beauty, having a necessary dark side or corner, a place where light can intrude, so we have a reference point for distinguishing virtue from vice?

The foul, messy crime on Neymar, which broke one of his vertebrae, was the one black spot, next to the fangs of Luis Suarez, on a World Cup that has been unusually free of them. At best the attack was shamelessly reckless and cynical. At worst it was the act of an assassin in premeditation.

Zuniga had no business challenging Neymar in that position, given that the Brazilian was fully and squarely between himself and the ball. A lawful tackle from there by the Colombian was geometrically impossible. It has to be presupposed, then, that Zuniga was on an agenda to eliminate Brazil's chief creator and biggest weapon. There is simply no other explanation. For his part, Zuniga claimed no intent to hurt. "It was a normal move," he said. Normal.

One prominent Rio paper called it cowardice, not inappropriate given that the attack came from behind on an unsuspecting Neymar. But beyond that, the next morning Brazilians were remarkably measured in their response. The mood was more about sorrow and support for Neymar than it was about anger, recrimination and lynching. Zuniga, a thug, got off lightly.

This I can only surmise has something to do with the Brazilian predisposition for joy and optimism and the dear wish of the people here to see this World Cup go down as a success. The Selecao, in other words, is still alive, still on track to win so let's not rock boats with distractions like witch hunts.

The Colombians, who are now gone, are making their own complaints about how their own star man, James Rodriguez, was targeted by the Brazilians, which he was. Shame on Luiz Felipe Scolari, too, for having, by his own admission, ordered his men to get physical.

Zico, the iconic Brazilian and a one-time target by brutish defenders no less than Neymar is today, wrote in The Observer, "FIFA should act strongly and punish Zuniga in the same heavy way that it treated Luis Suarez." He has a point. What is worse, the teeth marks on the shoulder of Giorgio Chiellini or the shuddering thought that a 22-year old may have been paralysed had Zuniga's knee connected a few centimetres higher up his spine?


Zico goes on to square off any accusations of bias by saying how angry he was at the way Brazilian players were taking turns to foul James Rodriguez and that a more rigorous referee, in his view, would have sent off Fernandinho in the first half.
All true. So where are the governors of the game in their response?

The assassination of Neymar has seen the remainder of the World Cup robbed of one of the world's most exciting talents. It robbed Brazil, one of the remaining teams, of its most lethal, match-winning weapon. It robbed us all of the potential of seeing Neymar and Messi, two defining talents of a generation, matching wits in a World Cup final. It robbed Neymar, a sweet and humble young man, of a chance to play in a World Cup semi final and maybe, at just 22, a final.

It is now a quarter of a century since FIFA, when Sepp Blatter was still secretary general, began a campaign to protect creative players, the entertainers, with measures such as outlawing the tackle from behind and punishing it with a red card. I interviewed Blatter in Rome in 1990 when he told me that the referee, Luigi Agnolin, would be removed from the World Cup panel for refusing to do just that. And he was.

Twenty four years later, this. Neymar will watch the rest of the World Cup convalescing on a bed. Juan Zuniga will be humbly licking his conscience in the belief that what he did was 'normal'.

And the rest of us will be missing something. It's such a crying shame.