No doubt there was some embarrassing feet-shuffling when Thomas Bach, the German President of the International Olympic Committee, attempted conciliatory small talk with Brazil's downcast President Dilma Rousseff when they met in Brasilia late last week.

Some 24 hours earlier his nation's magnificent football juggernaut had driven roughshod over the shattered remnants of Brazil's once-Beautiful Game, plunging the hosts into unprecedented despair with a 7-1 semi-final annihilation later to be compounded by a 3-0 drubbing by Holland in the playoff for third place.

The conversation may have been somewhat stilted. "Sorry about that, Madame President," Bach might well have mumbled.

During the semi-final Bach had sat alongside Carlos Nuzman, Brazil's Olympic chief, and as the goals piled in the thought surely crossed his mind as to the effect such a numbing shock would have on the Brazilian psyche as the country prepared for the second half of its sporting extravaganza: the Olympics in Rio two years hence.

Like every other Brazilian in the Maracanã, Nuzman, who heads the 2016 Organising Committee, wore a look of stunned disbelief.

Was he too wondering whether the football debacle will turn even more Brazilians against the Olympics than there are already?

Brazil's humiliating 7-1 thrashing at the hands of Germany begs the question of what effect it might have on the Rio 2016 Olympics ©Getty Images



This is a nation that has had its morale booted into touch. Restoring Brazil's pride will be an even harder task than resurrecting the football ethos that once enthralled the world.

Has Brazil still got the heart to stage a successful Olympics after this?

Or will apathy turn to anger as the public opposition towards the Games escalates over what they will cost amid the appalling poverty of so much of Brazil's underclass?

Also, we know their Games won't bring them great personal glory. They won't be anywhere near as golden for their own athletes as was London's for Team GB. Brazil's prospective top podium places probably can be counted on the fingers of one hand.

They know too that London 2012 is an impossibly hard act to follow. But they have to try and Bach is on record as saying he is confident Brazil will pick themselves up and get on with the job of building towards a great Games.

Well he may well be right. My insidethegames colleague Nick Butler recently observed that he sensed Brazil was slowly getting their Olympic act together.

Brazil have certainly demonstrated they can pull off a major sporting event, but in a little less than 750 days they are going to have to do it all over again when Rio stages the Opening Ceremony of the Olympics.

It remains a race against time. With so many projects behind schedule the debates will rage as to whether it can be done - just as they did in the build-up to the World Cup.

With so many projects behind schedule, Brazil's power-brokers have their work cut out, and they'll need to have the stomach for what is a race against time ©Rio 2016/Patricia da Matt



What we need to know now is whether after having the stuffing knocked out of them on the park, Brazil have the stomach for the fight - certainly more so than their footballers displayed against Germany and Holland.

Prominent among those who seem to doubt this is one of Britain's top international sports analysts. Professor Ellis Cashmore, senior lecturer in culture, media and sport at Staffordshire University, says the knock-on effect of the current national despair spells more trouble for a Games already beset with construction delays and financial problems.

"For Brazil, hosting the World Cup has been a disaster," he says. "I think they will rue the day they ever bid for it. The World Cup was designed as a showcase for Brazil to be joining the world's elite as a new economic power. Instead it has opened them up to ridicule. They have been humiliated. For years they have been the custodians of that Beautiful Game but that reputation has ended. They were humbled by Germany and Holland.

"Now they have two years before the Olympics. There were protests going into this World Cup because people thought it was too expensive and I think they will now lose much more public support for the Games. We will see an escalation in protests and demonstrations."

Protests dogged the build-up to the World Cup and there's a risk they could escalate ahead of the Rio 2016 Olympics ©Rio 2016/Patricia da Matt




Professor Cashmore is not alone in viewing Brazil's World Cup woe as a bad omen for the Olympics. Several figures in the Olympic Movement are privately expressing serious concern, though Brazilian President Rousseff did her best to reassure the IOC's Bach that this will not be the case.  After their meeting Bach, who rightly praised the organisation of the World Cup, declared: "I was pleased to hear the confidence President Rousseff has in the Games and what they will deliver, and it was good to know that the Games and their legacy will be a top priority."

So while our own apparently uncaring football flops continue to "celebrate" their first round KO in the tournament on beaches some distance from the Copacabana, we are left to ponder whether it will be carnival or catastrophe in Rio.

For Brazil this is a massive sporting double header. A game of two halves.

There were many in Brazil who thought they couldn't stage the World Cup but every Brazilian believed they would win it.

In fact the reverse situation proved to be the case.

After such a devastating own goal, receiving universal praise for the organisation of one of the finest - if not the best - of all World Cups at the moment may seem scant consolation for the desolation now sweeping a country mourning a lost ideal.

Yet getting behind the Olympics could be a wonderfully beneficial restorative. Imagine the international kudos and national joy should Rio 2016 be declared by Bach as "the best Games ever".

Meantime it appears Bach's more immediate priority is to ensure that the ticketing for Rio 2016 is not hit by a similar scandal as that in the World Cup now under police investigation. He has launched a top-level review of the process.

But whether the Olympics can be tickety-boo after Brazil's football debacle must be uppermost in his mind.

Brazil have already shown there's a way. But is there now the will?

Alan  Hubbard is an award-winning sports columnist for The Independent on Sunday and a former sports editor of The Observer. He has covered a total of 16 Summer and Winter Games, 10 Commonwealth Games, several football World Cups and world title fights from Atlanta to Zaire.