Month: May 2019

Coincidentally, the squads for Brazil’s two major tournaments this summer, the Women’s World Cup and the Copa América, were announced back-to-back, yesterday and today. Here they are:

On Friday the 17th, Tite will announce Brazil’s squad for the Copa América in June. He is likely to announce a 23-man squad, rather than a larger group from which a few players will be cut, which leaves him with some tough decisions. I read, though I can’t find it now, that he intends to start his training camp on May 20th, to begin working with every player not involved in the Champions League final as soon as possible. That would give him nearly a month to work with the players before Brazil opens the tournament against Bolivia on June 14. That interval might have been a good opportunity to call up a larger group, in order to observe some new faces before making final cuts, but it seems that is not to be.

So Tite is left with a bunch of tough decisions. Many of his favorite players, including a lot of the World Cup veterans, have underperformed for Brazil over the past year, while several newcomers to the Seleção made instant impacts that will be difficult to ignore, even though they’ve only played in two or three games so far. With that in mind, I’m going to try and lay out what his options are at each position, giving a depth chart based on how likely I think he is to choose each of these players. Note that I’m only including players who I see as having some remote chance of being selected—so no Oscar, no Vanderlei, no Lyanco, etcetera.