By After colorful opening ceremony of FIFA World Cup in Arena de Sao Paulo in Brazil the hosts opened the matches when they faced Croatia. Neymar scored twice and leed his team to the victory 3-1.
The first match of the FIFA World Cup met Brazil and Croatia. It was the third time only that those teams are playing each other. Croatia showed from the first minutes that its players do not afraid to face Brazilians on their land and after 18 minutes Croatia was in front after Marcelo scored own goal. The Croatian Ivica Olić gallops down the left and delivers a low cross pass which the Brazilian defender, Marcelo, inadvertently turns into his own goal after Nikica Jelavić missed a shot from close range.
After the first goal Brazil began to pressure back while Croatia began to spend powers on defense. Neymar saw the first yellow card in the tournament at the 27th minute but two minutes later he equalized the score after that Croatia lost possession in the center circle and the ball finds its way to Neymar, who shot a tricky shot into the right bottom corner of the Croatian goal.
At the 69th minute, the Croatian Dejan Lovren is adjudged to have felled Fred and earned a yellow card while Neymar makes no mistake from the penalty spot, and gave an advantage to the hosts. At the first minute of the extra time, Brazil break and Oscar scored the final goal in order to give final 3-1 to Brazil.
Former England captain Alan Shearer wrote to BBC about the match: “I think there were a lot of incidents the referee got wrong. The penalty decision was the worst of them all. Just seeing it again I cannot believe it was given. The penalty was poor, the goalkeeper got two hands to it. The goalkeeper really should have a look in the mirror at himself. However, what was not lucky was that Brazil did change the system really early, moving Neymar off the wing and putting him in the number 10 role and that was an important move in my opinion”.
Today, (Friday) Spain and Netherlands will play in group B and will repeat the last World Cup final.
Match highlights:
Opening ceremony of the tournament:
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