Apparently, Bruno Fernandes is having one of the best seasons of passing in the history of the Premier League. The stat guys say his numbers are the best in the league, he just broke David Beckham’s club record for most assists in a season, and he’s only four assists off the all-time Premier League record with seven games remaining.
I would not have believed this, because every time I see Bruno in a highlight, it seems to be him throwing away a promising break by shooting from 30 yards out rather than passing to an open teammate.
I wrote those paragraphs right after watching Brazil’s loss to France on Thursday, and only just came back to them this Monday evening, finding myself wondering just what exactly I was going on about. Something about, at least Bruno is posting good stats behind the scenes even if he’s taking these moronic low-percentage shots every time I glance up at him, and it’d be nice if Brazil could at least back up their own moronic low-percentage shooting like that?
But then I actually looked at the stats (Brazil is on the left in the screenshot below), and, well, I’ll be damned:
So what’s the lesson here? Is it that Brazil were secretly better than the eye test showed against France? Is it that statistics are a mixed bag that can color and sometimes even change the narrative built around the game? Or is it that fancy metrics are bullshit, the eye test is all that really matters, and Bruno Fernandes is in fact an infuriating ball hog?
Right now, I lean towards the latter, and not just because it lets me keep hating on Bruno Fernandes.
Brazil’s performance against France was… not good. I wrote in my big 2026 preview that Carlo Ancelotti’s coaching tenure was already showing some worrying signs, and they were all very much on display on Thursday. He continues to insist blindly on the same 4-2-4 as his predecessors, cramming all our star attackers into the lineup with no thought to how they’ll combine with each other. The intensity and quality of play is extremely inconsistent at best. The defense still makes at least one catastrophic error per game. He’s already picked favorites, and made some troubling picks; he revealed today that he appears to have bet his entire life savings on Danilo Will Come Good Island rising from the waves and becoming a prime resort destination.1
All of this would be at least somewhat excusable if the team were playing well, or at least winning games like these, but that’s not happening! France went down to ten men and then nonchalantly tore through Brazil like it was nothing. If not for Les Bleus’ own tendency, I’m sure very annoying to their fans, of only playing up to their incredible talent level for what feels like five total minutes a game and then walking around in second gear for the rest, we could have had a much more embarrassing scoreline. We only really stepped up in the final few minutes, with Bremer scoring a nice goal (the other Danilo, now officially christened Good Danilo, created that chance and was one of the few bright spots for Brazil) and nearly assisting a would-be last-second Vini equalizer, and even then the team was listless, disorganized, incoherent, its star players lacking any understanding with or confidence with each other or anything except their own ability to charge into the teeth of the defense and lose the ball (mainly talking about you here, Vini) and its lesser lights getting completely obliterated by Kylian Mbappé. (Seriously, how is Léo Pereira that slow? Bremer isn’t exactly fast, and yet Pereira ended up at least twice as far away from Mbappé as he did.2)
The question is: will anything change against Croatia?
Brazil vs. Croatia
Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida, USA, March 31, 2026
Kickoff: 8:00 PM EST / 9:00 PM BRT / 12:00 AM GMT
US TV/Streaming: ESPN Deportes
Starting XI: Bento, Ibañez, Marquinhos, Léo Pereira, Douglas Santos; Casemiro, Good Danilo; Luiz Henrique, Matheus Cunha, João Pedro, Vini Jr.
On The Bench: Ederson, Hugo Souza; Bad Danilo, Kaiki, Bremer, Vitor Reis (called up Friday); Andrey Santos, Gabriel Sara, Fabinho; Endrick, Igor Thiago, Gabriel Martinelli, Rayan. (Raphinha and Wesley out injured.)
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