Who’s truly the best team in South America? Let’s find out.

Argentina vs. Brazil

Estadio San Juan del Bicentenario, San Juan, November 16, 2021

Kickoff: 6:30 PM EDT / 8:30 PM BRT / 11:30 PM GMT

Possible Starting XI: Alisson; Danilo, Marquinhos, Éder Militão, Alex Sandro; Fabinho, Fred, Lucas Paquetá; Raphinha, Matheus Cunha, Vinícius Júnior (Philippe Coutinho).

Notes and Storylines

As would have been the case had the game in September not been interrupted by Brazilian health officials, this is a chance to see where we stand against an Argentina side on the rise. The Copa América final in July was arguably something of a nadir for Tite’s time in charge of Brazil: we came in on the back of long string of narrow wins barely papering over ineffectual, inconsistent performances, and our shortcomings were finally fully exposed against a team with the quality to burn our shaky pressing game and shut out our disorganized attack. Since then, we’ve had something of a revival, largely sparked by the addition of Raphinha to the attack, but is that enough to overcome an Argentina side that might be the most tactically sophisticated—and maybe the most loaded in midfield—in South America right now? But with our place at the World Cup now assured, Tite seems more willing to roll the dice in a high-profile game like this than he usually would, and that’s why the most interesting storylines to me will be second-string players getting big chances as starters.

First, there’s Matheus Cunha replacing Gabriel Jesus. Striker has been Brazil’s problem position for a long time now, and the problem may well be worse now than it’s ever been before. Here’s a crazy stat for y’all: Brazil’s ostensible number 9s—that’s GJ, Firmino, Richarlison, and Gabigol—have scored just two goals in 2021 as starters, and one of those was a penalty. (They’ve added four more when coming off the bench.) Starting at striker seems to be a poisoned chalice, the player often the victim of a poor team performance and his substitute benefiting from a tired opponent. There doesn’t seem to be much of a mechanism for incorporating the number 9 into the team’s play; even in our obliteration of Uruguay, GJ touched the ball less than half as many times as Raphinha, Neymar, or Lucas Paquetá.

And now it’s Matheus Cunha’s turn to drink from the chalice. Cunha is, in theory, everything we want from a center-forward: he’s bigger and stronger than GJ; he’s better outside the box than Gabigol; he’s faster and a better dribbler than Firmino; he’s much better technically than Richarlison. (He does have a nasty habit of missing easy chances, but we’ll let that slide for now.) But given how little playing time he’s getting for Atlético Madrid, he has a lot riding on this game. Play well, score, and he’ll earn himself some more looks. Don’t, and he may not get another chance until he gets minutes for his club again, and who knows when that will happen. Given that he hasn’t been super convincing in his brief cameos thus far, it’s hard to know what will happen tomorrow, but I worry that this issue with the number 9s is systematic enough that it will drag Cunha down with it, even if he can show that he brings something the others don’t. He’s on the outside looking in right now, and if he doesn’t have the good fortune to score, his continued inclusion will be a hard sell even if he plays well and improves the team around him.

Then there’s Éder Militão replacing Thiago Silva, suggesting that Tite has heard the various criticisms that Silva’s lack of pace hurt Brazil’s pressing game and was a liability in the Copa América final. In front of him, Fabinho replaces the suspended Casemiro. Many people on the blog have been critical of Fabinho’s performances recently, but I don’t think he’s been that bad. He’s maybe a bit slower with the ball and less aggressive than tackling than Casemiro, but given that the Real Madrid man is starting to get worryingly sloppy on both fronts, I’m not sure that’s a life-or-death issue. In any case, this is Fabinho’s chance to show that he can back up Casemiro better than Fernandinho ever could.

The last big change comes as a result of the breaking news that Neymar picked up an injury and will miss tomorrow’s game. Tite will have to choose between Vinícius Júnior and Philippe Coutinho, and he might be glad he has that choice to make after neglecting to call VJ in his initial 23-man squad. Tite obviously has a lot of admiration for and faith in Coutinho, despite his injury problems and lack of playing time over the past year and a half, but throwing him to the wolves in such a big match seems like a bad idea. Coutinho’s stamina was subpar even when he was at his best, and that could be a major liability if Tite wants Brazil to press, or even play on the counter. VJ’s superior athleticism should favor him in either case. But neither one can fully fill the gap Neymar leaves, and where VJ offers more in terms of pace and high-speed dribbling, Coutinho is surely, even now, better at setting up and combining with teammates with his passing. And it’s not a given that Neymar’s replacement will start on the left; Tite could very well set the team up like he did against Uruguay, where Neymar played through the middle and Paquetá was on the left. Perhaps it speaks to Uruguay’s lack of quality, but that team was more balanced than the one that played Colombia last Thursday, where Neymar was more on the left and Raphinha saw much less of the ball. In any case, if that’s the setup, I think (gasp!) Coutinho would be the better fit. (But wouldn’t Coutinho’s poor form compared to VJ make that not the best setup?)

Anyways, prediction time, and I’m going to be bold and predict a 2-1 win for us, even in an away game. I have two reasons for this. One, as good as Argentina are right now, they still seem to have a bit of a propensity for dropping a relative clunker or two, as in their 1-0 win against Uruguay on Friday, where they scored on their only shot of the first half and were ultimately outshot 19-7. And two, Lionel Messi’s fitness is in question, to the point where PSG were upset that Lionel Scaloni even called him up. Friday was the first time in five years that he started an Argentina game on the bench, and while he’s set to start tomorrow’s game, I have to think he’ll be a little bit short of 100%, which will drag the whole team down.

One smaller prediction: this game won’t expose Fred, much as we all want it to. Yes, in the Copa América final, he committed a tackle after two minutes that would have gotten him sent off had it been any more than two minutes into a major final, and got yanked at halftime. Maybe if he had gotten a red, that would have done him in. But if that game couldn’t sway Tite, then this one—where I expect the team around him to play better and elevate him, not to mention that he’s playing better for Brazil now than he was over the summer, painful as it is to admit—won’t either.