Casemiro’s gentleman goal saves a Brazil that is suffering without Neymar | CHRONICLE

However, for 82 minutes, those attending Ras Abu Aboud watched him suffer like someone condemned to the electric chair. He suffered because the solidity of the Swiss armor loomed indestructible. In the first half Sow had harassed Paquetá and Freuler and Rieder had taken care of Vinícius. The left lane was nullified and Richarlison was penetrating the field looking for a decent pass. The Brazilian game did not lose its beauty, but it appeared in bursts. It barely generated a clear chance, very little for someone who knows they are powerful, very mundane for a shirt as heavy as the yellow-green.

He also suffered from the absence of Neymar, the man who orders and illuminates when everything turns dark. His decision to stay at the hotel and not accompany the team had caused a small storm in the networks. More than the battered ankle, perhaps it was fear that he would see his impotence portrayed on all the cell phones in the world. She knew he was going to have a hard time. Perhaps he remembered what happened eight years ago, when a criminal entry by the Colombian Zúñiga snatched his soccer soul from Brazil.

Without Ney, the juggling of Richarlison and Rafinha was pure fireworks. In the second half, Tité sent Rodrygo as a fireman and began to wreak havoc on the left-handed flank. A disallowed goal for Vinícius was the warning of what would come next.

And what was to come is summed up in one name: Casemiro. Summarizing his goal in a bombshell is a vulgarity of those that abound on all websites. Sports journalists call so many goals that way that using the qualifier in this case would be an act of injustice.

It is that we would ignore that the play was started by Marquinhos, an all-rounder who never lowers his head. That Vinícius took it near the left line, he got in parallel to the big area and looked for Rodrygo. That he pretended to go to his left, disconcerting two defenders, and put his right foot down to enable Casemiro. And that the Brazilian commander did not put the tip in or hit it with the pins, but with the outer edge of the right boot to give strength and spring to a ball that Sommer could only admire as he entered his goal. Bombshell? Let’s call him a better goal man, one of the best so far in the World Cup.

Since the bloody game with the Colombians in the 2014 World Cup, Brazil has played 106 games. Of them, Neymar was absent in 37, won 23 and lost 7. The numbers are too cold to measure the absence of an older fantasist like the PSG striker. When he is not there, the Scratch suffers. Today he was able to hide it. It remains to be seen if he will reach him for what is coming.

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