Brazil 6 Honduras 0: This was the real opening ceremony as the Maracana explodes and Brazil embraces the Games
THE last booming bars of the anthem fade, the first whistle blows.
A rat-a-tat of passes causes panic in the opposition half. Their talisman closes down the last defender, robs him and he’s in.
The toe-poke, a split-second before the keeper gets there, both men sprawl, the ball bobbles over the line. The Maracana explodes with joy.
And 12 days into the Games, the host nation finally has the opening ceremony it deserves.
Not light shows and dancers, not an endless parade of athletes and a stream of interminable speeches, but football. The only thing that really matters.
With Neymar carrying the flag for 200million hard-pressed souls, hungry for something wonderful to cling on to.
Within 15 whirlwind seconds of the Men’s Football semi, they got it with a goal thousands still streaming up the concrete ramps to the stands didn’t even see.
As it went in, as much thanks to Honduras freezing in the spotlight as to rapier Brazilian attacking, those outside in the searing lunchtime heat cursed the queues, the security checks and that extra ten minutes they had in bed.
Because moments like this were what they’d signed up for, moments that are what sport in Rio de Janeiro is all about — the temple of temples rammed and raucous, samba beats, sunshine and O Selecao strutting like they’re born to do.
But wait. Neymar’s still down. They hold their breath as an army of physios hurtle on, then roar with relief as he’s lifted gingerly back to his feet.
He jogs towards halfway, then crumples again. A hush descends as this time doctors and paramedics arrive.
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They cart him off. Play rages on. He climbs off the stretcher and bounces back on the pitch. All’s well. Take the music off pause. Relax, he’s fine.
No, not fine. Remarkable, charismatic, unplayable.
When his country needed him to carry them to the final, he wore the responsibility like his favourite shirt.
The boy was everywhere, dropping deep to take the ball off defenders and start attacks, peeling wide to tease blue-and-white-striped shirts with his snake hips and dancing feet and coming in off the flank to conjure passes that defenders could not have read had they been carrying a Kindle each.
Off him flitted the elegant Luan, the stocky Gabriel Barbosa, linked with a £30million move to Mourinho’s United — and, most effective of all, Gabriel Jesus, the 19-year-old owned by Manchester City but loaned back to Palmeiras.
It was tough enough for the Hondurans to cope with each of these nimble, inventive forwards individually. But when they dovetailed, they were irresistible. Not to mention eminently kickable.
Neymar, of course, took the brunt, fouled an average of every eight minutes.
His canary No 10 shirt every bit the magnet for hammer-throwers as it once was when Pele and Zico wore it.
So what was a boy to do but get back up and punish their ugly lunges with gorgeous ability?
And 25 minutes in, he springs from midfield and feeds Luan for a through ball to Gabriel Jesus, who tucks away No 2.
Nine minutes later, he threads the needle and it’s Jesus again, nipping off the right-back’s shoulder like Mo Farah off the final bend and smashing home.
Brazil might have a right-back called Zeca, but it was their skipper who was all over this game like a rash.
Next Neymar is curling in a corner that PSG right-back Marquinhos stabs home at the second attempt for 4-0.
Then the Barca superstar curls a free-kick from 30 yards that Luis juggles round his right-hand post, then another that swishes the wrong side of the right-hand post. Neymar doing a soft-shoe shuffle past three defenders before stinging the keeper’s palms.
Then, after Luan taps in his second to top off a break by Barbosa and Filipe Anderson that went from languid to lightning in three seconds, Neymar finishes it all off with a last-minute penalty, shimmying and stuttering before putting poor Luis the wrong way.
This was all the Maracana cariocas had wanted. This was all Brazil full stop had wanted, right from the start, something huge and communal and inimitably Brazilian to celebrate.
Here and now, all the hassles the Olympics have brought to Rio didn’t matter, the transport chaos, the political strife and the crime didn’t matter, the debt they’ll be lumbered with when the circus leaves didn’t matter.
All they cared about was the beautiful game, on a beautiful day, in its beautiful spiritual home. Well, that and a ticket for Saturday teatime’s final.