Internet Desk: The utmost urge of the Brazilians fulfilled. Finally Brazil won their first Olympic football Gold. The score line gave all answers to Brazil football fans.
Somehow, penalties had always seemed inevitable. This is, after all, Brazil, the Maracaña, and a yearning for an Olympic gold that stretches back through a series of dead ends and deadening defeats. Plus, of course, lurking a little further behind this final was The Bad Thing, that 7-1 World Cup semi-final defeat by Germany two years ago that remains an unscabbed wound.
The game finished 1-1 after extra time, with Neymar’s first-half free-kick cancelled out by Max Meyer’s strike.
The hosts’ talisman Neymar stepped up to score the winning spot-kick and seal a 5-4 shoot-out win after goalkeeper Weverton had saved Germany’s fifth penalty, taken by Nils Petersen.
Barcelona forward Neymar, who missed the World Cup semi-final through injury, opened the scoring with a fine 25-yard free-kick, but the hosts were lucky to go in at half-time with the lead.
Germany hit the woodwork three times in the first half – through Julian Brandt’s 25-yard effort, a deflection off a Brazilian defender and Sven Bender’s header – before they scored a deserved equaliser shortly after the restart.
Bender passed to the overlapping Jeremy Toljan and he found the unmarked Meyer, who arrowed a low shot into the net.
The shootout itself provided a moment of unbearable drama, justification at a stoke for football’s often slightly frostily received presence at the Games. The stadium winced and prayed, or buried its face in a flag. The two benches huddled on the fringes. Germany’s Matthias Ginter stepped up to take the first penalty at the Brazil end (every end was the Brazil end in this cauldron of yellow). He buried it. Renato Augusto scored, to eardrum-fuzzing cheers. So it went on, Luan making at 4-4, only for Nils Petersen to see his low kick well saved by Weverton.
Enter Neymar (of course). The stadium hushed.
Neymar paused over the ball for a moment, stuttered, looked down, and then simply whumped a dipping, swerving shot past Horn’s right hand and in off the underside of the bar. The Maracaña erupted with a great barrelling roar, bodies writhing around in the stands, parents swinging their children into the air, flags hurled skywards.