It felt cruel. In the moments after Friday night's penalty shootout between Brazil and Croatia, an advertisement echoed through the stadium.
"Neymar's there!", the advertisement yelled out. And there he was, still on the field several minutes after it all ended, with his head in his hands and tears streaming down his face.
Brazil are gone, out of the World Cup that they always seemed so likely to win. They were favourites in this game and likely would have been in all of the ones to come. That didn't matter to Croatia.
If this were David and Goliath, and make no mistake, Brazil are a Goliath, then a penalty shootout is seemingly Croatia's rock, the great equaliser. They pushed the mighty Selecao to penalties and took over from there, with Rodrygo's miss setting the tone for his side's collapse.
And that's what it will feel like: a collapse. They seemingly had this settled thanks to Neymar himself, who had scored a career-defining goal in extra time to all but win it. All but, indeed.
Bruno Petkovic scored in the 116th minute and, from there, it all unraveled for Brazil, both the game and the World Cup.
Croatia are through. They've done it again. Argentina or the Netherlands await a team that just knows how to win games like this better than anyone else on the planet. They wait and wait and then strike, taking teams to extra time before, ultimately, taking them out of the competition.
