90min

Twitter reacts as Croatia dump Brazil out of the World Cup

By Tom Gott

Brazil are out
Brazil are out / Alex Pantling/GettyImages
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Brazil's hopes of World Cup glory were extinguished as they fell to Croatia in the quarter-final.

One of the favourites to go all the way, Brazil lost out on penalties and sent shockwaves around the world with their failure to advance.

Croatia weren't scared of Brazil early on and did their best to control possession and dictate the tempo of the game, with Neymar finding it particularly hard to evade the European side's press.

Brazil had their odd moments of quality in the first half, but in truth, it was almost all Croatia.

It was a great tactical battle but, in terms of action in front of goal, there's no denying the first half was lacking somewhat.

Indeed, the best individual highlight was probably Josip Juranovic out-pacing Vinicius Junior.

Brazil turned things up after the break and had a few half-chances of their own, with Neymar twice finding himself in the right spots but failing to make the most of his opportunities.

The second of those chances was well kept out by Dominik Livakovic, although replays showed the PSG man didn't really connect with the ball as he would have liked.

Livakovic continued to impress, flying off his line to block from Lucas Paqueta as he maintained his impressive form this tournament.

The Twitter scouts were thoroughly impressed.

Brazil kept pushing but couldn't find the quality needed to get themselves ahead, so to extra time we went.

Most of their efforts were led by Antony, who offered a massive spark following his second-half introduction.

It was not Antony who made the breakthrough, however.

It was Neymar, who unleashed a glorious solo run which ended with him rounding Livakovic, firing into the roof of the net and sending the fans into raptures.

The game looked done, but nobody told Croatia.

Now forced to come forward and look for a goal, it was substitute Bruno Petkovic who fired home with just a few minutes remaining to send the game to penalties.

Penalties kicked off with a goal from Nikola Vlasic and a save from the superb Livakovic.

Croatia scored their next three and their place in the semi-final was booked as Marquinhos' effort cannoned back off the post.

The pre-tournament favourites are out.

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