I had high hopes that Cote d’Ivoire could beat Brazil and go far in World Cup 2010. After watching the match, those hopes seem silly and I found myself asking a question during the match: who has beaten Brazil at the World Cup?
In the last three cups, that’s easy: France’s two famous victories and Norway in the third group game in 1998, after Brazil had already qualified. That’s it. In the last three World Cups only two teams have beaten Brazil and one of them doesn’t really “count.”
But what about for the whole history of the World Cup? A quick look at any World Cup history reveals that Brazil is the only team to play in every cup, has the most tournament wins (five) and is tied for most final appearances with (West) Germany, with seven each. Both those statistic reveal a quite a level of dominance – Brazil wins 27% of the World Cups. But I want to turn that on its head and ask: Who has knocked Brazil out? And who has beaten them at all in the World Cup?
In the first two cups, Brazil’s national football setup had a lot of fighting about organization and, as a result, there were no players from either Sao Paulo or Rio de Janeiro in 1930 and 1934. Brazil went out of both cups in the first round with losses to Yugoslavia and Spain.
In 1938 Brazil finished third, losing to the eventual winners, Italy, 2-1. Note that there was no World Cup in 1942 or 1946, due to World War II.
In the 1950 World Cup, which Brazil hosted, they needed only a draw in the last game to win the World Cup (this cup was unique in that the final round was played as a group of four), but lost to Uruguay 2-1.
In 1954 Brazil was knocked out by the “Marvelous Magyars” Hungarian team, which was unquestionably the best team in the world at the time, even though they lost the final to West Germany.
So, keeping score up until now, Brazil is already 10-5-2 in all World Cups, with losses to Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, Uruguay and Hungary.
That’s a pretty good record right? Twice as many wins as losses is a record most nations would crave in the World Cup. Well, Pele arrived in 1958 and Brazil didn’t lose again until 1966, lifting both the ’58 and ’62 cups while going undefeated 10-0-2.
In 1966 the team had disastrous preparation for the cup, succumbing to all sorts of new pressures from their success and crashed out in the first round, losing to a good Hungarian side and Eusebio-led Portugal.
But that’s okay, since in 1970 they posted a perfect record, going 6-0-0 and winning their third cup. At this point Brazil is 27-7-4 in World Cup matches with losses to Yugoslavia, Spain, Italy, Uruguay, Hungary (twice) and Portugal.
It took until 1994 for Brazil to win another World Cup. Sounds like they were doing badly, right? Like, omg 24 years between wins!! Yeah, compared to anyone else they were still spectacular. In the ’74, ’78, ’82, ’86 and ’90 World Cups – that’s five world cups – guess how many games they lost in that stretch? At least five you’re thinking right? Well you would be wrong. They lost four. They went undefeated in 1978, but the second round in that cup was a second group stage with only the winner advancing. Brazil came in second in their group on goal differential.
The four teams that beat Brazil? The Netherlands Johan Cruyff-led “Total Football” team, Maradona’s 1990 Argentina team, 1982 winners Italy, and Poland – in a third round match. Brazil also went out of the 1986 World Cup to a Platini-led France team on penalties (FIFA technically counts penalty shoot outs as ties). So, even counting that as a “loss” (there you can say they did lose five games in this period, but they were still undefeated in 1978), Brazil still posts a very envious 18-5-4 record over these five World Cups with the “dry spell” era dragging “down” their overall record to 45-11-10 (or 45-10-11, depending on if you want to count the France PKs as a loss).
From the 1994 World Cup forward things have been kind of absurd, not Pele era absurd, but still wildly dominant. Brazil won the 1994 and 2002 cups and made it to the final in 1998. That’s four world cups. They’ve lost three games, one of which was to Norway after Brazil had already qualified for the second round in 1998. The other two? Both to France, both to dominant performances by Zinedine Zidane. Now, of course, we don’t know that someone else would not have knocked Brazil out in 2006 (especially taking into consideration that the 2006 Brazil squad was in some disarray, one would give the benefit of the doubt to Italy), but consider just the possibility that were it not for Zizou we would be looking at four straight Brazil World Cup wins.
So where does that leave us? If you take away the first two cups – and we really should since we’re asking “how do you knock Brazil out of the cup?” not for a history of Brazilian professional football organization – Brazil is 64-12-13 (with 1 PK loss). Those 12 losses came to Uruguay, Italy (twice), Hungary (twice), Portugal, the Netherlands, Argentina, Poland, France (twice), and Norway. Now throw out the two meaningless games against Poland and Norway and what have we got?
We have 10 losses to seven nations. Of those losses, four of them (Uruguay, Italy x2, France) were to the eventual winner and four were to the runner-up (Hungary, Argentina, the Netherlands, and France). That only leaves the 1966 losses to a good Hungary team and Eusebio’s Portugal team (who finished third, by the way).
Think about that: aside from the cup where they melted down, since 1938 Brazil has only lost a meaningful game to either the winner or runner-up, posting an overall record of 64-12-13.
So, what can we take away from this? Essentially that if you aren’t picking Brazil to win the World Cup you had better have in mind a specific team who is knocking them out. And oh, by the way, those teams that knocked out Brazil? Every one of the teams in the post-war era had a superstar – Puskas, Kocsis, von Cruyff, Maradona, Eusebio, Rossi, Zidane.
So the formula is: look for the superstars, then figure out which ones have the cast to make it to the final, see if they cross paths with Brazil in the knockout stages. If you can’t, then for better or worse, Brazil is probably the likely winner. Or just pray for Brazil to have their own meltdown, but the 2006 team kind of did that and France seems to have a pretty firm grip on the self-defeat title for 2010.