2021 Copa América: Some Kind Of Postmortem

Well, fuck. That didn’t end super well.

We don’t need a long recap of Brazil’s 2021 Copa América campaign. A promising start, albeit one in which Brazil missed way too many chances and often started games far too slowly, fizzled out by the end of the group stage as the team had a harder and harder time scoring goals and taking control of games, ultimately losing 1-0 in the final and letting Argentina end their 28-year wait for an international trophy.

While Brazil generally dominated possession and allowed few good scoring chances to opponents, our attacking play increasingly fell apart as the tournament went on. We scored seven goals across our first two games of the Copa, but only five across our last five. We had a good 60 minutes to find an equalizer after Argentina went ahead in the final and never got particularly close.

So what went wrong? And who can we ~~scapegoat~~ blame?

Tactics, Squad Selection, and Tite

I’m a bit disappointed to not see the Brazilian media holding Tite’s feet to the fire more on this loss. Sure, there are some in the “he has to go” crowd, but that’s not quite what I mean. Right now I’m more interested in his thought process and what, if anything, he thinks he should have done differently or needs to change moving forward. If I were a journalist in a room with Tite, here’s what I’d want to ask him right now:

You clearly used this Copa América as an opportunity to experiment with your players and tactics. However, despite CONMEBOL letting teams call up 28 players instead of the usual 23, you persisted with essentially the same group of 24 players you called up for World Cup qualifying earlier in the month (the only change was Rodrigo Caio making way for Thiago Silva once the latter recovered from his injury). How do you justify not taking advantage of those last four spots when you were looking to experiment? (And he could justify it! Maybe CONMEBOL made the change too late to call up anyone from Europe and clubs in Brazil were unwilling to give up any more of their players. Maybe the CBF is prioritizing the Olympics and so Olympic-age players were largely given preference for that tournament, only for some of them to be forbidden to go by their clubs after the deadline had passed for the Copa. Maybe those aren’t satisfactory reasons, but they are plausible.)
The day after Brazil lost to Argentina, Italy won the Euros with three naturalized Brazilians in their squad, two of whom started in the final. How do you justify not calling them up to the Brazil squad when you had the chance, and what are you and the CBF doing to prevent promising players like Raphinha, Luiz Felipe, and Lyanco from representing European teams in the future? (Not that I think Emerson or Rafael Tolói are Seleção-caliber, but Jorginho certainly is, and while the CBF had made the mistake of ignoring him far earlier, his move to Italy happened under Tite’s watch. This is a much less relevant question than the first, but the timing is just too perfect.)

The first question is the more relevant one right now. I’ll talk about Tite’s tactics more in a second, but the original sin here was not selecting a more robust squad when he had the chance. As I see it, there were three main problems personnel-wise:

Nobody in the squad was capable of playing as a goalscoring number 9. (If there’s anything we definitely learned in this Copa, it’s who isn’t capable of doing that job. Richarlison and Gabigol are too technically limited; Firmino’s too old and slow; Gabriel Jesus is no longer really a striker.) But this one’s hard to blame so much on Tite. This Copa was Gabigol’s chance to show what he could offer and he didn’t deliver. Matheus Cunha and Pedro, the two other players who seem to have potential for the role right now, were selected for the Olympic side instead. (Flamengo ultimately barred Pedro from going to the Olympics, but I don’t think they would have let him play in the Copa considering they already had to let Gabigol play in it.)
Tite didn’t select anyone who can naturally play on the right wing, other than arguably Gabriel Jesus, who seems to have turned from a goalscorer into at least a right-sided wide forward. Everton Ribeiro, the other naturally right-sided player, is more of a right attacking midfielder these days. Beyond them, Everton Cebolinha and Vinícius Júnior both prefer to play on the left, Richarlison is more of a left/central player from what I’ve seen of his club play (though, ironically, he’s played pretty decently on the right for Brazil), and Lucas Paquetá has sometimes played on the right of midfield, but he is certainly not a winger. In short, the only player with anything like the skillset necessary to play on the wing (pace, dribbling, crossing and/or shooting) who was also comfortable playing on the right wing was Jesus, and he’s no Douglas Costa.
Tite selected an extremely thin midfield. Casemiro and Fabinho were the obvious best choices to anchor it, and Paquetá proved to be a pretty decent number 10, but otherwise, his only options were Fred, who’s a decent passer but can’t compete physically; Douglas Luiz, who he barely played, possibly since he’s also in the Olympic squad; and Everton Ribeiro, who is 32 and couldn’t produce anything like Paquetá’s creative impact. Somehow, there both weren’t any good options to shore things up when under pressure (since Tite seemed reluctant to have Casemiro and Fabinho on the pitch at the same time), and nobody to add any creativity if Paquetá was tired or ineffective. Obviously, Arthur’s development has stagnated pretty badly, and three extremely promising replacements (Gerson, Claudinho, Bruno Guimarães) were called for the Olympics instead, but surely one or two more options in this sector couldn’t have hurt. (Note that Tite has called up PSG’s Rafinha, once, but never given him any playing time.)

Between those shortcomings, it meant that when Brazil were struggling to gain control of games or find a goal, especially in the knockout stage, nobody Tite brought on from the bench could be counted on to do much.

Now for tactics.

I’ve been thinking a lot about a tactical analysis I read way back in May, just before Tite’s squad announcement for the World Cup qualifiers and Copa América, which talked about the sort of right winger Tite is looking for. In particular, he wants one who’s right-footed and is thus able to provide width or carry the ball to the goal line, rather than always cutting inside to shoot.

Why does he want this? Well, look at how Brazil have been set up recently, especially in attack. The left-back pushes high up the pitch to provide width in behind and combine with Neymar, who ideally is cutting into the middle and thus not providing that width. The “number 8” midfielder (recently Douglas Luiz or Fred) slides left to cover the space the left-back leaves behind. On the other side of the pitch, the right-back takes up a more conservative position, closer to being in line with the number 8 than with the left-back. This leaves the right winger as the primary party responsible for providing width and runs in behind on the right side—and so one who prefers to cut inside could a liability defensively.

The Copa reminded us that Tite might be devoted to this idea to a fault. He was so devoted to using only right-footed players on the right wing, but, as I mentioned above, he only called one right winger, and that’s only if you assume that Gabriel Jesus’ days of playing as a striker are over. He tried, unsuccessfully, to get Everton Cebolinha to play effectively on the right; he barely even gave Vinícius Júnior a chance. Perhaps a player as gifted as Philippe Coutinho could be effective playing out of position there; after all, he did exactly that during Tite’s best spell in charge of Brazil. But with Coutinho out for the tournament and Willian’s Seleção days now behind us, Brazil didn’t have many right-footed options who could actually play right wing. Rodrygo or Antony could have fit the bill, but both were being prioritized, it seems, for the Olympics, even though Real Madrid ultimately prevented Rodrygo from going. So why not give someone left-footed a try? Raphinha had a great season for Leeds cutting inside onto his left foot, David Neres seemingly reclaimed his starting spot from Antony at Ajax, and Malcom seems to be enjoying a resurgence. There would’ve been no harm in giving one of the unused places in the squad to someone like that, just to see.

Sorry, this is veering away from tactics again. The point is, why was Tite so dedicated to this setup even though he didn’t necessarily have the personnel for it? Well, the obvious answer is to accommodate Neymar, who usually plays from the left. But that just raises more questions. Why does Neymar always have to play on the left? Should Brazil keep playing like that even on days where Neymar is in a more centralized role? Couldn’t the team be set up to also support a right winger cutting inside and a right-back on the overlap, maybe catching out the opposition by switching which side is overlapping? If this sort of defensive structure is necessary because of Neymar’s lack of defensive responsibilities, shouldn’t he maybe be given more work rather than the whole team shaped around him like that? As good as Neymar is, if a tactical setup meant to accommodate him both fails to work offensively and forces the coach to not even consider worthy players in other key positions (thinking about both Raphinha, who seems like our best RW prospect right now, and Emerson, who I’ll bet didn’t see much playing time ahead of Danilo because Tite sees him as too offensively minded), shouldn’t the tactics change to find a better balance?

And there are other questions it raises too, like whether keeping one of the three attackers out wide like that hurt our goalscoring by meaning there was one less player making runs into the box. And there are questions elsewhere on the pitch too, like whether Thiago Silva’s lack of pace had knock-on effects that hurt Brazil’s pressing game. But I don’t have time to address them all, and this right wing issue is the thing that’s really been on my mind over the past couple of days. Brazil’s problem at the striker position will likely only be solved by the emergence of a quality number 9; as much as we clamor for Arthur’s return, it may be that Brazil won’t be truly competitive in midfield until we’re smart enough to not let the next Thiago or Jorginho get naturalized by a European country. But this right wing issue may simply be down to Tite choosing to use the wrong kind of right winger because he thinks it’s tactically necessary, and that’s a problem that can be addressed more readily.

A quick word too on Tite’s overall strategy. If you watched the Copa on the Fox Sports channels, you know they couldn’t go two seconds without talking about how Brazil’s game plan was to tire the opposition out and then hit them when they’re on the ropes. As a general plan, I really think this is pretty solid. It’s good to have a solid idea for how you’re going to play that you can build upon as needed. But as Brazil executed it, there were two main weaknesses. One, Brazil usually started too slowly, never scoring more than one goal in the first half of games. You can definitely blame the lack of attacking quality and the horrible, horrible pitches we played on to some extent for this, but the team’s lack of initiative before the 60th minute was frequently troubling, and it sometimes effectively meant we were throwing away a large chunk of time in which we could win the game. If Tite persists with his strategy, he needs to understand that the first half of a game doesn’t have to be slow and boring, even if you’re saving a little something for the second half. There’s a better balance that can be found.

Two, Tite’s second-half changes increasingly revealed themselves to just be “throw on more forwards and hope it works”. And it did work in our World Cup qualifier against Ecuador, when putting in Gabriel Jesus for Fred and switching to a 4-2-4 totally revitalized the team. In our big wins over Venezuela and Peru in the group stage, it’s more like Tite put on fresh forwards rather than more forwards, giving them the chance to attack tired defenses. (Indeed, against Peru he actually switched from a starting 4-2-4 to more of a 4-3-3 at halftime.) But Tite had a habit of returning to that 4-2-4. He switched to it when we were trailing at the break against Colombia, Roberto Firmino replacing Everton Ribeiro. Brazil won, eventually, with a bit of luck. He even started with it in the quarterfinal against Chile, only for Brazil to finally score immediately after he abandoned it at halftime and brought on Lucas Paquetá. In the final, as Brazil struggled to create any chances of note, he took it even farther, stripping the midfield until Brazil were essentially playing a 4-1-5, with Neymar, Gabigol, Firmino, Richarlison, and VJ all on the pitch and Casemiro desperately trying to cover for them. Blame it on the talent or lack thereof, maybe, but I’m really not sure how Tite really intended for throwing on all these forwards to break down defenses. I didn’t really see these changes introduce clever new off-ball movement or strategically overload certain sectors of the pitch; the aim seemed to be more that all these forwards could press the defenders and win the ball, and then any pass into the box would have more players potentially on the end of it. In retrospect, maybe that wasn’t clever enough.

But hey, there wasn’t a lot riding on this Copa anyway, at least before really on-the-nose metaphor Jair Bolsonaro moved it to Brazil and our final matchup was against an Argentina side that suddenly had a chance to end their trophy drought on Brazilian soil. Tite always planned to use it to experiment. (Why didn’t he use all 28 slots in his squad, again?) So what did he, and we, learn about his players? Well…

Players Whose Stock Rose or Fell Significantly

There’s going to be a lot more players in the latter camp than the former, but let’s start with the ones whose reputation and long-term prospects are surely better now than they were a month ago.

Lucas Paquetá is the obvious one. While he has some undeniable shortcomings, he showed himself to be the only person in the squad possessing anything like Neymar’s technical quality, as well as the only one who could actually create chances from midfield. He scored extremely important (and well-taken) goals in the quarterfinal and semifinal, and would have added two or three gorgeous assists to that if Brazil’s strikers had proven in any way competent.

There’s also Éder Militão, who backed up his improved season at Real Madrid, and especially gave a good account of himself in relation to Thiago Silva. I touch on this more down below, but it’s arguable that Silva’s age finally showed itself to be a tactical liability in this tournament, with Militão’s athleticism making him a better fit for Brazil’s pressing game.

This is going to be a controversial choice, but I think Fred technically deserves to be in this column. But this is really only because he’d been so lacking in his past appearances for Brazil. He definitely grew into his role during the Copa, making some very impressive passes on occasion. However, he also showed that he’s hardly outgrown his many, many faults—the misplacing of simpler passes to teammates; the lack of pace or strength to compete for balls in midfield; and let’s not forget that he probably would have gotten a red card in the final for going studs-up into Gonzalo Montiel’s shin, had he not done so in just the third minute of the game.

Put it this way: like Paulinho, if Fred continues to be an uncontested starter, then Brazil have no chance at winning the World Cup. But I’d rather have Fred in the lineup than Paulinho. Neither is useful enough, but I’d rather go with the guy who brings at least some technical quality. That, believe it or not, is more than I thought of Fred before this tournament.

I also want to give a shoutout to Emerson, who replaced Renan Lodi late in the final and despite being played on the wrong flank, was maybe Brazil’s best player besides Neymar while he was on the pitch. (Not a high bar, of course.) I really hope we can see more of him in his natural right-back position, but I fear he’s going to keep being passed over for “safer” options as long as Tite persists with his current tactics.

On the flipside, we have a real crowd.

Everton Cebolinha leads the attackers, not because he was ever the best of them, but because I, at least, still had a decently high opinion of him before now. In the 2019 Copa, he proved a capable replacement for Neymar, a scintillating dribbler with searing pace and a dangerous right foot. For much of this tournament, I excused his poor performances with the fact that he was struggling with being played on the right flank to accommodate Neymar on the left, but ultimately, I have to accept that that doesn’t explain how literally everything he tried failed to work. Whatever mojo he had two years ago has gone missing.

Roberto Firmino has been pretty ineffective for Brazil for a while, and an energetic showing in the final doesn’t excuse that. But what puts him here is how utterly lethargic he looked in some of Brazil’s other games. He played like he was exhausted ten minutes into the quarterfinal.

Gabigol absolutely deserved an extended look given his stellar goalscoring record with Flamengo, but he didn’t take his chance at all. Ultimately, much of the damage was done in the World Cup qualifier against Ecuador, where he missed a hatful of good chances, but in the Copa he struggled to combine with his teammates and only managed to score a single goal from a yard out.

I’m much less disappointed in Richarlison, but his limitations as a player have only become more apparent with time. He’s got some great physical presence (and was particularly good at holding up the ball against Chile), he’s a solid finisher, his movement in the box is good, but his technical limitations were painfully obvious every time he failed to beat his marker on the dribble or a bad first touch messed up a decent shooting chance.

I’m worried about Casemiro. He’s had a problem for a while of occasionally giving the ball away because he’s too casual or trying something too cute, but at this tournament, it was worse than it’s ever been, and sometimes, especially in a dreadful display in the final, it threatened to undo the defensive work he continues to excel at.

Renan Lodi had looked for a while like Brazil’s long-term solution at left-back, but after the Copa, that’s not so sure. Leaving aside his error on Argentina’s winning goal in the final, he was nowhere near the marauding presence on the left flank that notched four assists in his first eight caps for Brazil. A product of a lack of playing time for his club, or of Brazil’s tactical setup? It’s hard to say.

Thiago Silva, sadly, deserves a mention here. As good as he still is, his age really showed at a few moments during the tournament, getting beaten for pace and on the dribble in ways he never would have a couple years ago. But the biggest mark against him is that his lack of pace is now arguably a tactical hindrance; Tim Vickery pointed out that when Militão plays in Silva’s spot, the team is able to press more effectively and stay more cohesive. Though much of the blame for the losing goal in the final will be placed on Lodi’s shoulders, Rodrigo De Paul was able to play the killer assist because Brazil’s front line gave him all the time and space in the world. Maybe the decision to not press in that moment wasn’t down to Silva’s presence, but it stings nonetheless.

Last but not (or even more so?) least, there’s Gabriel Jesus. Obviously a big part of why he’s here is his moronic red card in the quarterfinal against Chile, just moments after we’d finally taken the lead, which, rightly, saw him suspended for our last two games. Even before then, his stats made for dire reading: three shots all tournament, one on target, no goals, one assist (for Alex Sandro’s goal against Peru), one successful cross. He hasn’t scored for Brazil since the final of the 2019 Copa, a span of two years, and his international career now looks increasingly like a couple of glimmers (his first few games in 2016, his resurgence in the semi and final in 2019) sandwiched in between years of goalscoring futility, missed penalties, and silly red cards at crucial moments. All that said, he was the only person in the squad who could operate even somewhat functionally on the right wing, as he did create some chances and occasionally succeed with his dribbles, and I think Brazil were worse off in the semi and final thanks to his self-imposed absence. While he may still have a future for Brazil as a wide player, this Copa was a reminder that he can’t be relied upon.

Goal of the Tournament

Tite’s Brazil, frustrating as it can often be, is usually good for a solid handful of really beautiful goals in whatever tournament they play. Even in the 2018 World Cup where they failed to score more than two goals in any one game, you had Coutinho’s screamer against Switzerland, Paulinho’s lob against Serbia, and Neymar’s combo with Willian against Mexico. One thing that struck me about this Copa is that there were unusually few goals of that sort of quality. Maybe you can blame the pitch or the lack of individual quality on it (and individual genius has factored heavily into many of Brazil’s best goals under Tite), but it was disappointing nonetheless. Still, I’m going to let you vote on the goals we did see. I imagine there will be a very clear favorite.

Neymar vs. Peru (group stage)