8th of July 2014, a historic day in every respect. The Brazilian national team would play the semifinal against Germany without the famous 10. Sem Dez. Never before did a Brazilian national team play an important game without the 10. One doesn´t have to be a hard core aficionado to know that the 10 is the symbol of creativity in the world of football. The player with the 10 always symbolized the creative quality of a football team, especially that of the most creative football team of them all, Brazil. Not anymore, the Brazilians had played pretty poorly throughout the tournament and only Neymar, the 10, could sporadically display some moves and goals that would qualify as jogo bonito. Jogo bonito, the beautiful game. To wear a number 10 jersey for a Brazilian simply follows the idea to support the identity of Brazilian football. On this day there was no number 10 player, Neymar was out. As if there was a chance of collectively replacing the most important player it seemed like every Brazilian football fan would wear that famous shirt on this historic day, the 8th of July, 2014.
Sometimes you wake up in Los Angeles and look into a cloudless white sky. Mostly the white is actually light blue but there is no sun. On those days of white light everything looks kind of unreal, no shadows, no black, almost no color, as if the light shone down from the milky way. I have never seen anything like it anywhere else and it is by far the most flattering light for all the angels of the city.
