Half-time in Houston, and the mood is savage. Brazil trail Japan in a last-32 World Cup tie, the dressing room is silent, and back home in São Paulo and Rio, millions are bracing for something that has not happened since 1966 — a group-stage-or-earlier exit from the sport's biggest stage. Japan, sharp, organised and entirely comfortable, are doing something remarkable: making the five-time world champions look ordinary. Enter Carlo Ancelotti — unflustered, precise, and carrying a managerial record that borders on the absurd.

Five Champions League titles, trophies in all five of Europe's major leagues, and now, improbably, his first international post. The 67-year-old Italian is the first foreign coach to take Brazil into a World Cup, and when reporters ask if he was worried at the break, his answer is almost insulting in its calm. "I was confident in our team," he says. That is it.

Nothing more. His only half-time change is forced — Endrick comes on for the injured Lucas Paquetá — but something shifts. South American football analyst Tim Vickery, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, frames the stakes with brutal clarity: Brazil, he says, are "traditionalist snobs," and the prospect of elimination at the last-32 stage by an Asian side represents a humiliation of historic proportions. The players clearly hear that message in their legs, if not their ears.

Martinelli's stoppage-time winner changes everything. Brazil have now recorded their first comeback victory in a World Cup knockout fixture since beating Turkey in the semi-finals in 2002 — a full 24 years of waiting, ended in the final seconds.