Some sporting earthquakes to rival Brazil

Even if you have absolutely zero interest in the beautiful game, it cannot have escaped your attention that the most momentous event in the history of football happened the other night in Brazil. You don’t need reminding of this, but just in case you do – Brazil lost 1-7!

They didn’t lose 7-1 as all the headlines have been putting. They lost 1-7; the crucial difference here, of course, being that Brazil were playing at home.

Just to give this a little context, Brazil have been by far the most successful sporting nation in the history of world football – winning an amazing five World Cups since they bagged their first one in Sweden back in 1958 with a 17-year-old Pele playing an integral part of the team.

Now the team that beat them the other night, Germany, have also been one of the most successful nations in footballing history. But here’s the thing; Germany had never beaten Brazil before in a competitive international. And yet they ran riot, bagging four goals in a remarkable quarter of an hour that changed football forever and seemed to leave the whole of the host country in tears.

“So what?” you may be thinking – we’ve all heard all this before. And you’re right. But to give things a little more perspective, amazing things do happen in sport. So here are a few other sporting “earthquakes” to rival Brazil’s 1-7 loss that really shook the world:

Staying with things-German for the time-being; how about Boris Becker’s unbelievable win in the men’s singles at Wimbledon when aged just 17 and completely unseeded?

No unseeded male player had ever won a Wimbledon championship before, no German player had ever won, and certainly no 17 year-old had the sheer audacity to take the greatest prize in world tennis. Becker did it all – and the sporting world was shocked to its core. This just doesn’t happen. If you take a look at the market for the next big tennis event, the US Open, you’ll quickly see that there is no-one on the list you haven’t heard of (if you like tennis that is). Boris Becker just came out of absolutely nowhere!

Or how about a young Tiger Woods winning his first Masters Tournament in 1997 – by 12 shots!? Twelve-shot margins just don’t happen at the annual gathering of the worlds’ finest golfers in Augusta. Woods was already highly regarded in the game when he turned up for this, his first ever crack at the Masters. But he’d only just turned professional and was still just 21 years of age. With his first round, he shot a respectable 70, but this was followed by two rounds of 66 and 65. Going into the last day, Woods had a nine-stroke lead, a lead he managed to extend by another three courtesy of a 69 in his final round.

In doing so, the young Woods smashed multiple records. This was and remains by far the biggest ever winning margin, it also made him the Masters’ youngest ever winner and the first black player in history to win a golf major.

Remarkable events happen in sport. But it has to be said – the drubbing of Brazil on home turf was pretty exceptional.

The editorial unit