France had won.
Won a crushing, one-sided victory—a ticket punched straight through to the final!
But out on the pitch, there was none of the usual delirious celebration. No cheering. Even the smiles on the players' faces were held in check.
The French players only traded light high-fives, or a pat on a teammate's shoulder.
They all understood, deep down, that this 8–1 rout was a catastrophe—for Brazil, for the team, for the fans. To win by a margin that lopsided, they didn't dare celebrate. They couldn't.
After all—they were standing in Brazil's own backyard, and they were genuinely worried they might not make it back to France.
The players knew it, too: at the rate they'd been playing in the first half, if they'd kept attacking at full tilt, pushing the score into double digits wouldn't have been out of the question.
But from the moment Deschamps started making substitutions in the second half, pulling back the tempo, everyone reached the same unspoken understanding—enough is enough.
They knew all too well that a win like that would turn into humiliation, that it would tip the whole situation over the edge, and that they might really pay for it by never making it home to France.
Restraint was respect for their opponents. More than that, it was self-preservation.
The scene in the stands told the same story of contrast.
When the goals first went in, the French fans had roared and celebrated every single one, no holding back.
But as the score kept climbing to 5–0, then 6–0, then 8–0—their cheering thinned out bit by bit, the joy on their faces giving way to something more careful.
All they could do was hold it in.
Watching their team win big, unable to let loose in the stands, the most they could do was pull out their phones and vent to friends by text.
By the time the match ended, they were all just standing silently in their seats, not daring to raise their voices.
Even before the final whistle, a large contingent of heavily armed security had already circled the section where the French fans sat, forming a tight, continuous barrier.
After the match, security stayed on high alert throughout, holding the exits firmly and forbidding the French fans from leaving on their own—they would have to wait until every last Brazilian fan had cleared the stadium before the French could slip out, quietly.
All to keep the two sides from colliding.
The French fans went along with it without complaint, sitting quietly, waiting it out. Not one of them grumbled.
Football, sometimes, really is a kind of war.
Set against France's restraint was Brazil's despair.
The instant the final whistle blew, the Brazilian players could no longer hold themselves together. They dropped to their knees, some were collapsing flat to the turf, hands clutched over their heads, faces streaked with tears.
They cried without restraint. For them, tonight was nothing short of falling straight into hell.
They had just lived through the darkest, most hopeless moment of their careers.
The French players didn't linger for even a moment. The instant the whistle sounded, they hurried straight for the tunnel quickly.
Not until they were inside the locker room with the door shut behind them— did everyone finally break into laughter.
The players threw their arms wide, pulling each other into tight embraces. Cheers, shouts, laughter—the whole locker room was filled with noise.
Julien stood at the centre of it, teammates were crowding around him, a smile was finally breaking across his face.
Meanwhile—on television, the Brazilian commentator's choked voice kept replaying with sobs he couldn't hold back:
"...We're sorry—sorry to this land, sorry to every countryman watching from home, sorry to everyone who loves Brazilian football. We turned our own home ground into a disgrace. We took the pride of samba football and ground it into the dust... This is the darkest day Brazilian football has ever known. I will not forget this night for as long as I live..."
Every fan who loved Brazilian football felt that same grief.
Each of them carried it like a struck match, and together they set the whole country's pent-up despair blazing.
Beyond the stadium, the nation that worshipped football as a religion had fallen into total chaos.
What had been ground for celebration became, overnight, an ocean of rage.
Brazilian fans stopped holding back.
Up and down every street, knots of fans gathered, shouting abuse, howling into the night.
No one was talking about their love of the game anymore—only raw fury, venting the wound this 8–1 collapse had torn open.
In south-central Belo Horizonte, small-scale riots broke out first.
Fans who had lost all control gathered together, wrecking public property along the roadside without restraint. A few extreme fans turned to self-destructive displays of grief, tearing at Brazilian flags in public, then burning them, the flags were curling and blackening in the flames.
As if Brazilian football's dignity itself was being ground to nothing right along with them.
Police arrived quickly, trying to disperse the crowd, but met fierce resistance. The two sides fell into a standoff, the scene was descending into chaos.
In the end, police arrested seventeen fans who refused to comply and had gone too far and only then did they manage to bring the situation partly under control.
In the city centre, the chaos only grew worse.
According to footage uploaded online, a group of grief-stricken Brazilian fans gathered together, clutching Neymar's number 10 jersey, cursing wildly as they set it burning.
Flames licked at the cloth, sending up rolling black smoke.
The fans stood with beer bottles in hand, chugging one after another, roaring at the burning jersey.
Strangely enough, Brazil had been under blazing sun for days, the heat was scorching the land. But tonight, on the night of the team's ruin, even the sky itself seemed to weep for Brazilian football.
In Rio de Janeiro, São Paulo, and other major cities, not long after the match began, sudden torrential rain came pouring down slamming into the pavement and splashing up in sheets.
But it did nothing to douse the fire burning in the fans' hearts. If anything, it only pushed the chaos further into madness.
In the rain-soaked night, fans worked into a frenzy vented the fury pooled in their chests through smashing, looting, and destruction.
At a bus depot in downtown São Paulo, fans set twenty buses on fire; roaring flames swallowed the vehicles whole, the glow was lighting up the night sky red.
In the end, nineteen buses burned completely, leaving nothing behind but twisted metal frames; another was left scorched beyond recognition. The scene was left in ruins, the air was filled with the smell of char.
In Brasília, the chaos escalated as well. At a long-distance bus terminal, one fan, unable to accept the result, lost control and smashed a television inside the station.
Police arrived quickly and arrested him on the spot.
Scenes like this were happening everywhere.
Rio de Janeiro, host city of the World Cup final, should have been the epicentre of celebration. Instead, it became Brazil's own heartbreak—wave after wave of violence broke out, even a fierce gunfight.
Fans exchanged fire directly with police.
The latest reports confirmed one death from the shooting.
Rio's Copacabana Beach, once a gathering place for fans to watch matches and celebrate together, had also become a scene of violence and disorder.
During the match, a gang of a dozen or so robbers seized the chance to run wild, tearing bags and phones from fans on the sand, even yanking jewellery straight off their bodies. The sudden robbery threw the whole beach into panic.
Residents and fans scattered in every direction, screams and cries filled the air; the harsh flash of police lights sliced through the night sky, lighting up the panicked crowd. It was chaos all around.
The gang wasn't done. They went on to loot nearby shops and bars, even beat innocent fans along the way, pushing the chaos to its peak.
The rain kept falling. The chaos kept going.
This 8–1 catastrophe hadn't just destroyed Brazilian football's pride—it had set the whole country burning.
A nation that had once boiled over with football fever now lay wrapped in despair.
Overnight from a football holy land to a battlefield of chaos.
Amid all this, social media was flooded with every kind of voice.
Among them: Brazilian President Rousseff wasted no time after the match, posting to Twitter to apologize to the Brazilian people.
"Like every Brazilian, I feel very, very sad. I offer my deepest apologies to the fans, to the players, to everyone. But we cannot allow ourselves to fall like this. Brazil, get up. Brush off the dust, and keep moving forward."
Rousseff had not attended the semifinal in Belo Horizonte. But at the stadium, some fans had protested against her, angry that the government had spent $11 billion hosting this World Cup.
Even so, Rousseff still held a fairly high approval rating, and was seeking a second term. That, at least, counted as a restrained statement.
The legends of Brazilian sport, on the other hand, opened the shot.
First up was Romário.
Romário was heartsick over the current state of Brazilian football, and he aimed his shot straight at the Brazilian Football Confederation:
"The sport we love most is going through a crisis. You think the problem is only the players and Scolari?
Not even close. For years our football has been rotting, and the blame lies with those bosses—watching from their luxury boxes while millions pour into their accounts. They're no different from thieves, from crooks, from the mafia.
I have spent years fighting the Brazilian Football Confederation—an organization riddled with corruption for as long as anyone can remember. They fly our flag, wear our colours, sing our anthem. And more than that, they use our manpower, our resources.
They control our football.
Make no mistake—football is business, and it's money.
And yet I have never once had the support of President Rousseff or the Minister of Sport, though I've asked our federal government, again and again, to intervene politically in football.
In 2012, I filed a complaint over a whole series of illegal financial seizures, corruption, money laundering, and illegal sponsorship deals. That complaint has sat locked in a drawer in Brasília for two years.
The Speaker of the House called that a bad look.
I don't agree with that, though I respect the decision but isn't now exactly the moment to finally pull it out of that drawer?
I feel ashamed. We should all feel ashamed of having the most corrupt football confederation in the world.
They are shamelessly arrogant. Our own press officer assaulted the Chilean player Pinilla—that alone sparked plenty of outrage.
The confederation's president, José Maria Marin, is a thief who stole energy and public land. Marco Polo Del Nero, our vice president, should be arrested and investigated, and the federal police should be looking into the corruption and conspiracy running through our financial system. They're the ones steering our football right now—is there anything more shameful than that?
Marin and Del Nero belong in prison. The confederation's corruption is the root of this team's failure. Don't forget—for a long time now, they've been the ones calling the shots.
With Marin and Del Nero influencing the confederation's expectations and its direction, failure was decided a long time ago."
All across Brazil, chaos had swallowed everything from top to bottom.
No one cared about the rest of the tournament anymore. It had nothing to do with Brazil now.
Did it matter whether France, Argentina, or the Netherlands lifted the trophy?
Not anymore.
It wasn't going to be Brazil, whatever happened.
Meanwhile, in the internet for countless trolls and Brazil supporters commented and posted.
Online, plenty of neutral and other countries' fans couldn't resist to create memes and jokes.
"Brazil, don't cry. Tonight, we're all supporting you guys."
"From the peak to the pit—maybe it's really just one match away. Falling from the summit to the bottom is something a team like Brazil, used to reigning supreme, could never accept."
"6–0 after just 40 minutes of the first half. This is world cup Semi-final right? we have literally never seen a scoreline like that..."
"Anyone waking up tomorrow and seeing this score is going to assume France and Brazil went to penalties and Lloris saved every single one."
"From here on out, France's main job is figuring out how to make it out of the stadium alive."
In fact, the reality wasn't quite that dire.
After the post-match press conference wrapped up, the French team, escorted by police and security, made it safely back to their hotel.
Meanwhile, a heavy police presence had been posted all around the hotel where the French team was staying, patrol cars were circling the building.
No one wanted to risk furious Brazilians doing something extreme.
Brazil's own mess was already big enough as it was.
The disgrace had pretty much bottomed out already. But at the end of the day, that was Brazil's own domestic business. If something actually happened to a visiting foreign team on their soil, that would be a whole different level of catastrophe.
Julien stood at the hotel window.
Looking out at the chaos in the city below—the wail of sirens, the noise of shouting—he shook his head, more than a little helpless.
It made him think about how he'd ended up here in the first place.
All because, he'd gone to watch a match of the Manchester united in person, gotten so furious he'd clashed with home fans and in the chaos, someone, he never found out who, had hit him on head.
And that was how he'd arrived. So, he understood exactly how the Brazilian fans felt right now.
Except here, things were just a bit more chaotic.
After that, his thoughts drifted back to the phone call he'd just gotten.
Zizou had called to congratulate him, asked after his safety, and only then brought up a few matters concerning the World Cup final.
He told Julien to stay calm above all, not to repeat his own mistake.
And finally, Zizou told him: "Win the World Cup, and the Ballon d'Or is yours."
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