They all cried more or less. It was tears of joy in case of Julio Caesar who was earlier receiving encouragement from teammates before the start of the shoot-out. Hugging coach Scolari, Neymar cried too after such an energy draining encounter. But one Brazil player still continued to cry even after most of the Brazilian players have left the field to celebrate their victory against Chile at Belo Horizonte on Saturday and it was none other than midfielder Willian, who saw his penalty kick miss the target.
With the score locked at 1-1, Willian replaced his Chelsea teammate Oscar with 15 minutes of action left in the match. But he could not exert his usual dominating presence and failed to score from the shoot-out. Although Chile custodian Bravo dived the wrong way, Willian’s right-footed shot went wide near the right post.
And since missing the penalty, Willian never looked a free man till the end. While he was trudging back to his players with his head down, David Luiz, who scored from first spot-kick, rushed to him and gave him a close hug to console which eventually helped Willian to recover.
But Willian erupted in joy when Gonzalo Jara hit the left hand post of Caesar to miss Chile’s last spot kick. Surprisingly he again became subdued moments later and opted to isolate himself from others while the rest of the team was busy celebrating. He was rather pointing to the sky, possibly asking God why he had to endure such a nerve-wrecking agony. The 25-year old winger was crying by raising his hands towards the heaven.
While most of the players left, Willian was still sitting on the line of the mid-circle. A management staff then approached him and asked him to go with him and Willian obliged. We may never know what actually was going through his mind. But we can only speculate whether it was the regret of missing the penalty or expressing gratitude to the God for saving him from being vilified.
