Yes, but Germany made them look mediocre with their supreme class. Does anyone think a full strength England would even have beaten Brazil last night, never mind going 7-0 up before the 80th minute?

As I said futher up, there's a danger of overrating the performance but there's also a danger of underrating it too......a team that scores seven goals against the hosts in the WC semi final has clearly played freakishly well.

The stats by the way paint a fascinating picture for those who think Brazil were mediocre beyond belief and that any team could have beaten them last night : Brazil had 8 shots on target to Germany's 10, they had 7 corners to Germany's 5 and had 52% possession to Germany's 48%.

That was a devastating performance from the Germans and one that no other team in the tournament could have managed.

Sorry, the Elo Ratings for football are nonsense. Concocted by people who don't understand football to be read by other people who don't understand football.
They may be a perfectly valid guide for chess, but trying to apply the same principles to football is just stupid. Everyone will have their own ideas about the greatest games/achievements, and everyone will be equally right..it's not something you can measure.

They're actually highly respected : they had Brazil, Spain, Germany, Argentina and the Netherlands as their top 5 before the tournament started (when the FIFA rankings had the Netherlands at #15)

You can only beat what's in front of you.

Very true. I would rate Germany beating Cruyff and Maradona in World Cup finals and Platini in the semi-finals higher than yesterday's display against a bunch of headless chickens without their only two players who can play football.

It's nearly been forgotten though that Brazil started the game strongly and created a lot of chances in the opening ten minutes (ditto in the first ten minutes of the second half).

Certainly the defending for some of the goals was really poor but to suggest that it was a shambles of a performance and that any team in the FIFA top 20 (including England) would have hammered Brazil last night would be doing Germany a huge disservice. They looked bad because of Germany's scintillating play and devastating finishing.

If you want to respect them, that's fine. They obviously have some merit in the current ranking of teams, I certainly wouldn't argue with that. Something that is results based is quantifiable.
But in rating historical performances, and comparing the value and quality of a team's performance in games, I just think their conclusions are meaningless. What I'm saying is that your judgement of the value of a team's performance means as much to me as anything that an ELO rating might conclude.

It's very interesting though that they have attempted to attach a rating to every single international football match in history.

We hear a lot of opinions bandied about by fans as to who were the best ever teams but to do with it a statistical ranking system and where opinions play no part is intriguing at least. According to the current ratings, Germany should beat NL or Argentina quite comfortably in the final, and NL have a narrow edge over Argentina tonight.....let's wait and see what happens

To have the best performance ever you have to have some opposition, and Germany didn't. They strolled casually through a match against one of the worst ever displays by an international side, never mind a Brazil side.

The best performance (this WC) was Holland against Spain. Holland were phenomenal that day where as Germany yesterday were just good. They were very clinical but didn't have to work hard. Holland still had to work really hard to get their goals and they did it in style against a team who still have so much quality in their disposal despite their decline.

I thought Brazil started off ok and then became a kind of wobbly sponge of a team - too much standing about by defenders and not noticing there's a German behind you for instance.

But apart from Brazil's performance all credit to Germany - a really good match - I really enjoyed it. I'm looking forward to the final and hope Holland will be there.

Can you please stop doing this?

In theory yes but you have to factor in that this display took place in a World Cup semi final.

I don't agree either that Brazil gave one of the worst ever performances. Germany had "only" 10 shots on target : that's less than Belgium had against USA (18) and Brazil actually had more corners and more possession than Germany.

Name a worse Brazil performance.

No, I'm saying 'worst ever performance by an international team'. Clearly that was Brazil's worst ever performance in an international match.....a huge number of defensive errors and general poor tactical play and bad decisions.

It made it worse that they could perform like that in a WC semi final. The defence was non existent, and Germany could have scored as many as they liked. They were casually passing the ball to each other in the Brazil box, unchallenged, and at times miskicking, but still being able to score.

For the 2nd half Germany played at a stroll, to save themselves, but I also think not to humiliate the hosts even further.

The possession and shots of Brazil were of little significance when you consider the fact they never defended any better than a pub team, and that for the first half their heads had gone.

They were without their only two class players, and I think fear overtook them the moment they went behind, and they were a shambles from then on.

I cant think of a more abject international performance, especially considering the significance, and importance of the game.

For clarity, there have been worse international performances, from teams like San Marino etc, but for a world power of a team, I've never seen anything close to being as bad as that.

I wouldn't disagree with any of that. The first goal knocked the stuffing out of them and left them very nervy and the second goal left them shattered and they fell to pieces over the next five to ten minutes and conceded 3 more.

I'd still argue though that Germany are perhaps the only team in the tournament who would have the class to go 2-0 up against Brazil in the opening 20 minutes, so it was as much German brilliance and determination that led to the Brazilian collapse as anything else......I suspect a lot of the other big name teams would have bottled it being 1-0 in front and allowed Brazil to come back onto them.

To me that was really a 3-0 /4-1 peformance, was very good for sure, but those 3 goals in two minutes was ridiculous

How many of the German goals did not involve basic defensive mistakes by Brazil?

You get freak results. Everything they did went right. Everything Brazil did went wrong. They had a lot of shots, and neuer stopped the lot.

Partly freak result like England beating Germany 5-1.

I said in the other thread, it seemed similar to the Germany Portugal game. Everything went wrong for Portugal in that game as well.

Pretty much.

Germany were very good. They were ruthless in the way they kept going forward in numbers and opening up Brazil at will, but it was like the first half of the Liverpool 5-1 Arsenal game last season where Arsenal didn't even turn up. Just far too easy.

To a certain extent, though I think Germany would have been good value for a 3-1 or 4-1 win, which would still have been hugely impressive in a WC semi final.

But they all involved brilliant counter attacking and superb passing by the Germans too.....Brazil were getting torn apart by the speed and accuracy of the passing.

There were miskicks, and rebounds involved in some of the goals, but it didn't matter, because there was no defence as we know it.

Brazil have played the whole WC in a frantic, almost out of control manner, with no proper format. Glenn Hoddle said about an earlier game that it was like playground football, and it was.

They looked terrified before the first game, and never appeared to have any composure. They then lost the only two players they had with any quality, and as soon as they conceded, everything fell apart, and any decent team would have beaten them easily.

Germany are good, but didn't play at anything like full potential to get the goals they did. They'll never have had an easier game, and probably never will again.