BE­LO HOR­I­ZONTE – With Ney­mar out and Brazil's for­wards in­ef­fec­tive through­out the World Cup, it will be up to the team's de­fend­ers and mid­field­ers to keep Brazil in con­tention at the World Cup.

Brazil is hav­ing to turn the fo­cus away from its once-mighty at­tack ahead of the semi­fi­nal against Ger­many to­day, hop­ing the rest of the team will be able to come through and car­ry the hosts in­to the fi­nal.

Brazil scored 10 goals in its first five match­es, with half of them com­ing from de­fend­ers and mid­field­ers. Ney­mar scored four, with cen­ter for­ward Fred on­ly find­ing the net once. De­fend­ers scored the team's last three goals.

With­out any re­li­able op­tions for the at­tack, coach Luiz Fe­lipe Sco­lari is al­most cer­tain to re­place strik­er Ney­mar with a mid­field­er.

Sco­lari re­cent­ly even con­sid­ered re­mov­ing Fred from the line­up and adding a third cen­tral de­fend­er, go­ing back to the 3-5-2 for­ma­tion that he used when he led Brazil to its fifth world ti­tle in 2002.

"We are a team, and a team is not made up on­ly of strik­ers," Sco­lari said. "We have a group. When this group wins, every­body wins, re­gard­less of who scores the goals."

Chelsea mid­field­er Willian is the most like­ly re­place­ment for Ney­mar, but in the team's fi­nal prac­tice on Mon­day, Sco­lari hint­ed that he may even use three de­fen­sive mid­field­ers, with Luiz Gus­ta­vo re­turn­ing to the team af­ter a yel­low card sus­pen­sion.

"We have good play­ers for the sec­tor where Ney­mar played," Sco­lari said. "We have op­tions. I'm con­fi­dent, I'm not wor­ried."

In ad­di­tion to the Barcelona star, the coach picked four oth­er strik­ers for the World Cup: Fred, Bernard, Jo and Hulk.

Fred was sup­posed to sup­ply the goals, but the Flu­mi­nense play­er strug­gled from the be­gin­ning and has been loud­ly crit­i­cized by fans and lo­cal me­dia. His lone goal came in the 4-1 win over Cameroon in the team's fi­nal group-stage match.

"Fred has been play­ing for the team," Sco­lari said. "We can keep win­ning, even if he doesn't score. Fred is not the on­ly one in charge of scor­ing. Every­one has that re­spon­si­bil­i­ty."

Brazil hasn't had a star strik­er since Ronal­do stopped play­ing af­ter the 2006 World Cup. Luis Fabi­ano was the team's starter in the 2010 tour­na­ment in South Africa.

In ad­di­tion to miss­ing Ney­mar, Sco­lari al­so won't be able to count on cap­tain and cen­tral de­fend­er Thi­a­go Sil­va be­cause of a yel­low card sus­pen­sion. Dante, who plays in Ger­many for Bay­ern Mu­nich, is al­most cer­tain to re­place him.

Sil­va scored one of Brazil's goals in the 2-1 win over Colom­bia in the quar­ter­fi­nals on Fri­day. Fel­low de­fend­er David Luiz scored the oth­er. Luiz al­so had scored the team's lone goal in the sec­ond round against Chile.

The oth­er goal-scor­ers for Brazil at its home World Cup were Os­car and Fer­nand­in­ho, both find­ing the net in the group stage. (AP)

The Con­tenders

RIO DE JANEIRO–Brazil and Ger­many are two of the most dec­o­rat­ed teams in foot­ball, with eight World Cup ti­tles be­tween them. Both have their share of play­ers among the all-time greats, and both en­tered this tour­na­ment be­ing tout­ed among the main favourites.

So even with­out the in­jured Ney­mar, to­day's semi­fi­nal in Be­lo Hor­i­zonte pro­vides an in­trigu­ing matchup for any neu­tral fan, as Ger­many and Brazil play each oth­er at the World Cup for the first time since the 2002 fi­nal.

Here is a look at how the teams com­pare in 2014:

GOAL­KEEP­ERS

Manuel Neuer has been one of Ger­many's best play­ers this tour­na­ment, es­pe­cial­ly in the knock­out rounds. He bailed out Ger­many's er­rat­ic de­fence nu­mer­ous times by rush­ing out to clear ball af­ter ball in the sec­ond-round win over Al­ge­ria, and made key saves to de­ny Karim Ben­ze­ma an equalis­er for France in the quar­ter­fi­nals. The Bay­ern Mu­nich No. 1 has won just about every­thing at club lev­el and is re­gard­ed as one of the top keep­ers in the world.

Julio Ce­sar used to have that rep­u­ta­tion as well, but is ar­guably not quite the play­er he was dur­ing his best years at In­ter Mi­lan. He now plays for Toron­to in Ma­jor League Soc­cer. He's been sol­id at this World Cup, how­ev­er, where he has yet to con­cede more than one goal in a game. And the 34-year-old Ce­sar has come up big when Brazil need­ed him to.

Ad­van­tage: Ger­many

DE­FENCE:

Brazil has al­ways been known for its at­tack­ing play, but this World Cup squad ar­guably has more im­pres­sive names in de­fence. How­ev­er, the team's best de­fend­er – cap­tain Thi­a­go Sil­va – is sus­pend­ed for the semi­fi­nal, a big blow for the back four. But Brazil has a good re­place­ment in Bay­ern Mu­nich's Dante to put in along­side David Luiz, while coach Luiz Fe­lipe Sco­lari will have to de­cide whether to put Barcelona's Dani Alves back in at right back or stick with Maicon, who was a sur­prise starter in the quar­ter­fi­nals. Re­al Madrid's Marce­lo should guard the left wing.

Ger­many's de­fence looked down­right aw­ful against Al­ge­ria, and coach Joachim Loew re­spond­ed by drop­ping cen­tre back Per Merte­sack­er for the next match and mov­ing cap­tain Philip Lahm to his favourite po­si­tion as right back in­stead of mid­field. The changes worked, and Ger­many looked like its old sol­id self against France. With Mats Hum­mels back to an­chor the cen­tral de­fence – and even scor­ing the win­ning goal against France .

Ad­van­tage: Brazil

MID­FIELD

Ger­many's mid­field has been giv­en a big boost by Bas­t­ian Schwe­in­steiger re­turn­ing to full fit­ness af­ter a knee in­jury. Play­ing along­side Sa­mi Khedi­ra, Schwe­in­steiger can con­trol the pace of the game while al­so help­ing out de­fen­sive­ly, giv­ing Toni Kroos room to work as the team's main play­mak­er. While Mesut Ozil has had a fair­ly lack­lus­tre tour­na­ment so far, he's one of the world's best passers and could still prove cru­cial for Ger­many.

Brazil's mid­field will like­ly have a new look for this game as Sco­lari is ex­pect­ed to re­place Ney­mar with a mid­field­er – prob­a­bly Willian. The Chelsea play­er has enough speed and skill to cause de­fend­ers trou­ble, but doesn't have the scor­ing abil­i­ty of Ney­mar. Os­car, an­oth­er Chelsea play­er, will al­so need to step up as a play­mak­er. Luiz Gus­ta­vo is back af­ter a sus­pen­sion, which should help shore things up de­fen­sive­ly.

Ad­van­tage: Ger­many

AT­TACK

With Ney­mar in the team, the for­ward line was al­ways a strength for Brazil. With­out him, it's a glar­ing weak­ness. Fred has strug­gled bad­ly as the team's cen­tre for­ward at the World Cup, scor­ing just one goal in five­match­es. Hulk has looked live­ly through­out but has yet to score, while Jo has failed to make an im­pact when he's come on as a sub­sti­tute.

Ger­many, mean­while, has Thomas Mueller and Miroslav Klose as its main at­tack­ing op­tions. Mueller has four goals so far in Brazil – one short of his tal­ly in South Africa in 2010 – while the 36-year-old Klose has a chance to break the World Cup scor­ing record. Klose shares the record of 15 ca­reer goals with Brazil great Ronal­do, so the Brazil­ian de­fend­ers will prob­a­bly be ex­tra ea­ger to shut him down. Ger­many al­so has bet­ter op­tions off the bench, with Lukas Podol­s­ki and Mario Goet­ze to bring on.

Ad­van­tage: Ger­many

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