A lot of you might be unfamiliar with Eloratings, but they are considered the main rival to the FIFA world rankings and are highly respected. They have produced a rating for every single international football match in history and have given Germany an all time high of 2180 points tonight. This is just not the highest rating for this World Cup or any World Cup but for any football match ever.

For the record, they rank Argentina as the second best team in the tournament marginally ahead of the Dutch.

Germany were only so good because Brazil were beyond bad. It's like Germany was playing with a random local youth club team from Andorra. Brazil were just terrible. It was basically a training session for Germany.

So I wouldn't rate Germany's performance that highly. Let's see how they do against a proper team like Argentina or Holland.

I don't believe that Germany only looked good because Brazil were so bad.
Because you could tell by the way that they were playing that no matter how bad Brazil were, Germany's passes were accurate, their positioning was excellent, they created moves off the ball, they did everything as well as you could possibly hope them to.

If Germany weren't good, then you would be able to tell by how poor they were passing, or how badly they controlled the ball. But they were on top of their game and rarely made unforced errors.

Even allowing for Neymar and Silva's absence and the numerous defensive errors from Brazil, for any team to win any World Cup semi final 7-1 against the #3 in the FIFA rankings is a staggeringly good performance. There is a danger you can overrate the performance but there is a danger you can underrate it too

I agree with that. Because you could just as easily say that Brazil looked so bad because Germany were outstanding.

Exactly : does anyone think teams like Italy or England or Spain could have beaten Brazil 7-1 tonight? They may not have won at all in fact, or only by the slimmest of margins

This is going to be Germany's downfall, it was amazing result, but if people concentrate on this result and praise Germany like their footballing gods, ala hand them the trophy now, given that for me anyway, they are only marginally better than Holland/Argentina. Whoever faces them will feel like massive underdogs, when quality wise they're not, meaning there's going to be little pressure on them, because everyone will be talking about Germanys magnificant, "the best ever" performance against Brazil.

I think its a really dangerous situation to be in, Ghana, USA and yes even Algeria all ran Germany extremely close. Boateng was defensively part of a side recently that lost 5-0 to Real Madrid in Bayern's own backyard, similar to this result all came very quickly.

Germany are not invincible, the media, including the likes of Gary Lineker are saying they can't see anyone else other than Germany winning because of this result now.

The best thing would be for Argentina to knick a 1-0 tomorrow, everyone completely write them off, and then have Messi, Aguero, Higuian, Di Maria, if all fit and well to go after Germany's defence as the "underdogs".

Holland beat Spain, a far superior side, 5-1 earlier in the tournament. Spain may have been past it, but remember we just had an all Spanish CL final featuring a lot of those player. Quality wise they were still a million miles better than Brazil therefore.

Holland would also have won big tonight, I'm absolutely sure of it, Brazil were absolutely awful, Germany were very good, but I do believe other sides could have done the same. That was waiting to happen to Brazil against a quality world class attack.

Clearly Germany are not going to win the final 7-1. If they do win it against either NL or Arg, it will probably be 1-0 or 2-1 or something.

But I would definitely agree with Eloratings that Germany were on fire tonight and in scintillating form.....it's not as if Brazil were down to ten or nine men either.

Agreed. I am dreaming of a Holland v Germany final and for Holland to win, but playing Argentina will be much more difficult for Germany. Argentina have been very underestimated in this competition. They are very well organised, look extremely solid in the back and have the ability to stifle the other team's game and then they have the moments of brilliance from Messi. Argentina are not going to be an easy nut to crack.

Well that's where Eloratings are able to come into play and they tell us that Germany's 7-1 demolition of Brazil was a far more impressive performance than Holland's 5-1 win over Spain.....the Dutch may well have won tonight, but I have my doubts they could have been 7-0 up with ten minutes to go.

Honestly do you believe that despite Spains lack of hunger, or out of form players, that Brazil are better than Spain?? Thats Brazil tonight without Neymar and Thiago Silva?? I know Diego Costa/Villa had there problems but they sure as hell aint Fred. It was in Brazil, thats the only overriding factor in play here, but there's no way Brazil would be more difficult opposition that Spain, even now.

I'm refusing to get carried away here, the same way the whole world was going OTT about Bayern 0-5 Real Madrid, or Man Utd 1-6 Man City, or Germany 1-5 England etc (all away performances you'll note). I didn't believe any of those sides became world beaters after that, and history kinda of proved later, they weren't.

I don't know Eloratings methodology, but in my opinion, its was much about Brazil's shambolic defending, and a very good German side that helped exploit it. But I do think other nations were capable of that. The only thing I'm not so sure of is whether anyone could have done it as well in Brazil's backyard as Germany did. But I predicted prior to kick that Brazil were going to conceed early goals, because their defence was so shambolic, and honestly I wasn't really suprised they conceeded as many as 3 or 4, 7 was a bit suprising I must admit.

What was impressive about Germany tonight was that at 5-0 up, there was a real danger at the start of the second half that they would retreat back into themselves and start conceding goals. Brazil started an onslaught on the German goal for the first ten minutes or so : many a team in this World Cup would probably have conceded and then been forced into a rearguard action against a Brazilian team growing in confidence for the rest of the half, and perhaps conceded another one or two,

But Germany held firm and by the 60th minute or so were back in total control of the game, that was a sign of supreme class,

What was so impressive about the result was the nature of the match itself. Germany 1 England 5 was a qualifying match in Munich. Germany to score seven goals in a World Cup semi final is a staggering achievement and we'll probably never see it again.

I've been watching football for nearly 30 years now, and I can think of several better performances than Germany's last night. sure, they were very impressive, but Brazil were utterly dreadful too. it was nowhere near the best performance ever IMHO

Barcelona 5-0 Real Madrid.

I'm far from a Barca fanboy. But Real Madrid didn't even play badly in anyway shape or form in that match. They were a multi-million pound side with Ronaldo and one of the best managers ever. It wasn't a capitulation like last night, but a gradual wear done of constant pressure and attacking football, I've never seen anything like that performed at such a high level over 90 minutes. Ever.

Brazil were effectively down to 5 or 6 men as half the team were absolutely useless and the rest mediocre.

As I said in the match thread, if that had been Ghana or the USA in there instead of Germany, the result would have been very different. Obviously the Germans have improved since the group stage but those teams showed that if you're well organised, defend properly and even have a go at the Germans, they can look very ordinary. For this reason, the Germans would probably want to avoid the Dutch who could do far more damage than the Argentinians.

Holland consistently hit Spain on the break.

Germany had a lot of possession last night

I remember when AC Milan beat Barcelona 4-0 in the European Cup final in the early nineties.
That was a superb performance.

Liverpool were absolutely superb in the first half when beating Nottm Forest 5-0 back in 1987/88

Argentina have been organised and defended well in this tournament.

What about the Aussies winning 31-0?!

Wasn't that a better performance??

What about Arbroath winning 36-0?

What about AS Adema beating SO l'Emyrne 149-0?

If I remember rightly, the SO l'Emyrne goalkeeper Mamisoa Razafindrakoto, was suspended over that. So were Andrianiaina and Rakotoarimanana.

(what about Rakotonandrasana?)

Oops meant to say Ghana or USA instead of Brazil!!