Bewilderment in Brazil as Germans issue reality check

Three days on and the images from Belo Horizonte that stick in the mind are not those of David Luiz’s Sideshow Bob- standing-on-a-rake routine, nor Germany’s seven wonders, but instead it’s the youngsters and grown men crying in the stands.

It’s actually been a World Cup peppered with shots of supporters taking in games in stadia around Brazil and even in this seemingly innocent pursuit it has been easy to be cynical.

A high proportion of these seem to have focused on the sort of stunningly attractive women you would expect to see wearing the latest season’s styles on a catwalk in Milan rather than a knock-off yellow and green t-shirt with bad stitching in Fortaleza or Recife, but there has, too, been a preponderance of fans clutching those horrible plastic beer glasses with the markings of a well-known brewing company emblazoned around them.