It promises to be a fascinating contest in prospect as two shrewd and tactically genius coaches in the form of Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and Germany coach Joachim Loew brace their teams up for the first semifinal of the Fifa World Cup 2014 at Belo Horizonte today.
With his trump card Neymar ruled out of the World Cup due to the injury he suffered against Columbia in the quarterfinal and Thiago missing because of suspension, Scolari may not has had to work so hard in the tournament so far as he has worked hard now to overcome the uphill task of toppling Germany to book a place in Maracana’s final on next Sunday. He has to devise a magic formula to compensate for the vacuum created by those two key losses. Scolari used the 4-2-3-1 formation against Chile and with the possibility of Willian coming in, the 2002 world cup winning coach of Brazil may deploy the same formation. He might also ponder using a 3-5-2 formation with Fernandinho, Luiz Gustavo, Oscar and Hulk marshaling the midfield with Fred and Willian playing as forwards. Marcelo, Dante or Maicon, David Luiz and Dani Alves should constitute the core of defense while Fernandinho and Gustavo might drop deep occasionally to nullify German threats.
On the other hand, Loew had been essentially fielding a 4-3-3 formation since the start of the tournament with Philipp Lahm deployed as a holding midfielder and Thomas Mueller as a false-nine. The choices were strange in that Loew mostly favored a 4-2-3-1 formation throughout Germany’s World Cup qualification campaign. In the quarter-final against France, Loew reverted to his former formation as the Germany coach repositioned Lahm in his preferred right-back role. He restored his previously more utilized 4-2-3-1, and even fielded an out-and-out striker in Miroslav Klose to spearhead the attack.
Meanwhile, Fifa has confirmed that Brazilian team will wear their original uniform consisting of yellow shirts, blue shorts and white socks. This will be the third time the Scolari army will be playing in their traditional outfits. The first time they were in their traditional outfit was against Croatia in the World Cup opener, a match they won 3-1 while the second was in the goalless draw against Mexico. In their three following matches against Cameroon, Chile and Colombia, Brazil wore white shorts.
The Germans wore their trademark white uniform only once in the World Cup, in the 1-0 victory over the United States in the group stage. Germany thought of playing in their second green kit, but that idea was scrapped for being unpopular, according to Oliver Bierhoff, the technical coordinator of the German team. Germany will now wear red and black shirts, black shorts and black socks with a red accent and dash of white.
The ever so important individual to officiate this high voltage encounter will be Marco Rodriguez from Mexico, the referee who failed to see Luis Suarez bite Chilieni during the Uruguay-Italy match in the first round. Including Uruguay’s 1-0 win against Italy on June 24, the Mexican has refereed two World Cup matches so far.