Another year, another set of Brazil games to look forward to. And we don’t have long to wait.

So Here’s Brazil’s 2020 Calendar

January 18 – February 9: CONMEBOL Pre-Olympic Tournament

This starts literally next weekend! And it’ll determine whether or not we get to play another tournament on this list! And I have no idea if we’re prepared or not!

The Pre-Olympic Tournament is being revived for the first time since 2004, ending a decade-plus of South American sides having to qualify for the Olympic men’s football tournament via the Sulamericano U-20. It’s probably for the best; it certainly makes more sense to to select the best nations to represent the continent in a global U-23 tournament based on the results of a U-23 tournament six months before the big show than a U-20 tournament 18 months before. Also, Brazil has not done well at the Sulamericano U-20 in recent years, so it’s nice to get another crack at making the Olympics.

So will we make it? Eeeehhhhh… the problem with this tournament is still basically the same as that with the Sulamericano: because it’s held during the European club season, countries whose best young talents have already moved overseas are rarely given the green light from their clubs, and that has seriously punished Brazil in recent years. Look at the murderer’s row of eligible names who were cut from the squad at the last minute, or were never even called because the staff knew their clubs would never let them go: Rodrygo, Vinícius Júnior, Gabriel Martinelli, Douglas Luiz, Wendel, Emerson, Lyanco, Roger Ibañez, Renan Lodi. That’s nearly an entire world-beating U-23 lineup right there. The squad we ended up with is still good, with big names like Matheus Cunha and Good Paulinho still getting the green light from their European clubs and exciting youngsters like new Real Madrid signing Reinier Jesus stepping up, but coach André Jardine will still have to make do without a good half of the regulars he worked with while he was building this team in friendlies.

In any case, we’ll soon see. Brazil’s first game is on the 19th; we play Peru, Uruguay, Bolivia, and Paraguay in the first round, and if we finish second or better in our group, we advance to a final group of four, from which only the top two teams will qualify for the Olympics.

July 22 – August 8: The Tokyo Olympics

Even if the men don’t make it, the women have already qualified by virtue of winning the 2018 Copa América, and will (once again) seek their first major international title. It’s likely to be the last we’ll ever see of Marta and Formiga for the Seleção, as age finally catches up to this golden generation, but it also could represent an important step forward: it’ll be the first big test for coach Pia Sundhage, who last year became the CBF’s first foreign coaching hire in my lifetime. She led the USA to the gold in 2008 and 2012, and there’s genuine optimism surrounding this team ever since she took over from Vadão. Just look at the difference in results: Vadão lost 11 of his last 13 games in charge, while Sundhage is so far unbeaten in eight games, with six wins and 24 goals scored to 2 conceded.

You know, if Brazil win the gold, I’m going to be so mad. It’ll be proof that the only thing that kept this group of players—including, let’s not forget, the greatest player ever—from winning a major global title was the lack of a competent coach. It’d be like how Aaron Rodgers is going to win the Super Bowl this year after Mike McCarthy wasted the last decade of his prime. Sorry, wrong sport.

2022 World Cup Qualifying Begins

This’ll take up essentially every FIFA date for the next two years, meaning it’ll be a while before we can see Brazil tested against European opposition. Here’s the rundown of games in 2020, grouped by FIFA date:

March 26 vs. Bolivia (home), March 31 vs. Peru (away)

September 3 vs. Venezuela (home), September 8 vs. Uruguay (away)

October 8 vs. Colombia (away), October 13 vs. Argentina (home)

November 12 vs. Ecuador (home), November 17 vs. Paraguay (away)

Major questions still loom around whether Tite has lost his way and whether the serious dip in performances after last year’s Copa América will carry over. These games cover such a large time span that it’s hard to make any sweeping predictions about their significance, but I do want to point out the relatively easy matchups that open our campaign in March. We should always expect to beat Bolivia at home, and in recent years we’ve only ever lost to Peru via fluke situations (the Ruidíaz handball in 2016, anyone?) or truly dismal performances (the meaningless friendly last September, anyone?) We should expect six points from these games, and with a tough three-match sequence against Uruguay, Colombia, and Argentina looming later in the year, anything less could be seen as a bad sign for our hopes of qualifying for the World Cup. I think Tite will be able to right the ship somewhat, at least to the degree that Brazil won’t shit the bed in two games they should win pretty comfortably, but if he doesn’t, he could go into the Copa América under some serious pressure.

Speaking of…

June 12 – July 12: Copa América

For reasons I don’t quite get, CONMEBOL has decided to move the Copa América to the same year as the Euros—last year’s edition was the last time the tournament will be held the year after the World Cup. Having won last year at home, Brazil are under somewhat less pressure than usual to win this year’s running in Argentina and Colombia. With World Cup qualifying necessarily taking top priority, and the Olympics (hopefully) serving as a proving ground for the talents of the future, the Copa’s significance for the Seleção is somewhat up in the air. It might be of great personal significance to some—particularly Neymar, for whom this might be his last chance to win the Copa América after missing last year’s tournament through injury—and it’d be satisfying to deny Argentina a title on home soil. But its primary value is surely as a testing ground for 2022. The risk-averse Tite could use it to test out some new players without the danger of bringing them on in games that might affect Brazil’s chances of making the World Cup. Furthermore, the new extended format, with a six-team group stage that ensures each team plays at least five games, gives more opportunities to test out changes and build team chemistry.

I’ll make more substantive predictions on these tournaments once we get closer to them and know whether or not Neymar will be injured this spring, so in the meantime…

Here Are A Few Predictions On Individual Players

Neymar will finally make it through the second half of a season with PSG without a major injury… but it won’t be enough to prevent another of the club’s now-customary Champions League collapses. It won’t be Neymar’s fault, but there’ll be nothing he can do to prevent it.

Also, he’ll be healthy over the summer, but he’s not going to play in both the Olympics and the Copa América like he says he wants to. There’s just not enough time between the tournaments to make it feasible.

Should Gabigol move back to Europe, he’ll flop. This is not to say that I think he’d necessarily fail in Europe, but rather that I can only see him ending up at clubs that would be a bad fit. He’s getting a lot of interest from the Premier League, where he might be overpowered physically and be quickly relegated to the bench. I don’t think he’d necessarily flop in England, but he’ll be drawn to the sort of big teams that have enough depth to quickly kick him out of the lineup if his form dips. I could see him thriving somewhere like Sevilla, who don’t have a reliable goalscorer and play in a league that should afford him plenty of space, but I can’t see that being the sort of move he makes.

João Pedro will exceed expectations at Watford. After an extraordinary first half of 2019, the teenager faded out of the limelight at Fluminense, at one point getting into a spat with Ganso, who hilariously accused him of not tracking back enough. His new side Watford have a good track record with young players signed from Fluminense—remember that Richarlison’s success for them came as something of a surprise—and they’re better than their dismal league position would indicate. They’ve been mired in the relegation zone because of some absolutely dismal finishing. Despite being a reasonable 14th in shots per game, they’re dead last in goals scored, and if you go by expected goals, they’re somehow worse. They’ve scored over eight goals less than xG says they should. In Europe’s top five leagues, only Atlético Madrid and SPAL 2013 surpass them in this regard. They’ve created good chances whenever I’ve seen them play; they’re just not converting them. While Troy Deeney’s return will help as much or more than João Pedro’s arrival, the kid could very well find himself making vital contributions, and rediscovering the form that made him look so exciting before Fluminense’s season began circling the drain.

The Olympics won’t be the end for Marta. Her best days are firmly behind her, but she’s only 33, which in footballing terms seems to be the new 30. Even though she’s declined far more precipitously than her contemporary greats like Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo, my baseless guess is that she’ll want to continue for a little bit longer, even if she ultimately retires from international duty well short of the 2023 World Cup.

Sergio Agüero’s decline will make Gabriel Jesus the clear first-choice center forward for Manchester City… if only Pep Guardiola realizes it, which he won’t. It’s going out on a limb to say that Agüero, still clearly better than GJ at age 31, will fall so far this year. What might help is that GJ is not done growing and improving as a footballer. More importantly, should it happen, I think Pep is going to get in the way. For all his reputation as an obsessive, tinkering tactician, he’s never seemed very willing to adjust City’s approach to account for how GJ moves and thinks differently than Agüero, and that sort of inertia is going to keep him insisting on the Argentine as his first-choice striker even after it becomes obvious that he shouldn’t be.

Either that, or Gabriel Jesus will get fed up enough with the whole thing that he’ll finally move somewhere else.

Bruno Henrique will win some caps for Brazil based on his excellent 2019, but will never reach those heights again. Partly this is because it looks like a classic case of a historically decent player having one extraordinary season, and partly because I expect Flamengo to be thoroughly stripped for parts during this transfer window and the team to necessarily regress as a result.

Reinier Jesus will fall off the radar at Real Madrid. Total hunch, and I’d love to be wrong because I love the way he plays, but something tells me that he’s the sort of kid who’ll get too full of himself about playing for Madrid and end up not putting in the work to develop into a world-class player.

Vinícius Júnior will pull an Adama Traoré. With the important caveat that I think Vinny has a much higher ceiling, I think he’ll follow something very much like Traoré did: cast off as a teen from one of the Spanish giants, only to resurface at a smaller club and blossom into an extraordinary player. Again, though, I want to emphasize that he’s already at least where Traoré was when he was 21 or 22 and lighting things up in the Championship.

Dani Alves will play his last game for Brazil. This might be the most outlandish prediction of the lot, but I’ll throw it out there. He’s playing more as a midfielder since he moved to São Paulo, we’re finally seeing new young talents like Emerson emerging at right-back, and with him turning 37 in May, the odds that he’ll be physically incapable of playing at the level the Seleção demands, or that he’ll suffer an injury from which he cannot recover, are increasing. I predict we’ll see him in the early World Cup qualifiers and at the Copa América (especially if Emerson is playing in the Olympics), but at some point, he will finally cede his spot on the right to the youth.