Eight days to save the world

TRADITIONALLY, Brazil were the team that made f-words not only acceptable but unavoidable. Words like finesse, flair, flash, flamboyant. And going into yesterday’s World Cup quarter final against Holland, they seemed to have been superceded by another, more all-embracing term: formidable.

For 45 minutes and more in Port Elizabeth yesterday, the Brazilians were just that: impregnable at the back, cutting at the front and leaving no space in between for the Dutch to get even a sniff of a foothold in the game.

But then, suddenly, a couple of ugly f-words intervened. Freak, for the self-destruction which gifted Holland an equaliser. And foul, for the idiotic stamp which saw Melo – already credited with an own goal – ordered from the field of play.