With advancement to the Round of 16 secured after two games, Tite sent out the B team to play Cameroon, and they almost, but not quite, threw away our first-place finish in the group. Black Matt popped up to write a wonderful breakdown of that and the entire group stage, and you should definitely read his much-more-detailed thoughts on the matter, but for what it’s worth, here are my thoughts:

  • The truly concerning thing about the 1-0 loss to Cameroon wasn’t the scoreline itself, but the whole performance. In all three group stage games, Brazil has really labored to create clear chances, and has missed all too many of the ones we do create. The second may be unavoidable given our relative lack of truly reliable goalscorers (though we should surely be doing better than this with the ones we have!), but that only makes it more important to get the first one right, play well enough that we create a large enough volume of chances to make up for our poor conversion rate. In all three games, we’ve been far too languid, especially in the first half, and on top of that have started the second half on the back foot. We may be able to keep scraping by only playing for the last 30 minutes of games for a little bit longer, but it won’t win us the World Cup.
  • I’m reminded of how we played in the 2021 Copa América: slow, usually in control, but struggling desperately to actually create and convert chances, and when we finally went behind in the final, we couldn’t figure out how to claw our way back. Tite made some serious improvements in Brazil’s subsequent games: bringing in Raphinha and Antony revitalized the right wing; Bruno Guimarães looked set to become a surefire starter; the experimental “all the forwards at once” formation gave a good account of itself against Ghana and Tunisia. But now that we’re back to a tournament format, the cautious approach again seems to rule all. What’s the point of starting four forwards in a formation clearly intended to press opponents high up the field if you don’t end up pressing them much?
  • It’s also worth noting that this was Brazil’s worst goalscoring performance in a World Cup group stage since 1974, a grim thing to think about. Tite’s last World Cup in 2018 had been the worst since 1990. He still hasn’t led this team to score more than twice in a single World Cup game, a stat that very likely will have to change if we hope to win the whole thing.
  • Another extremely ugly stat about Brazil’s attacking performances under Tite in World Cups: only two of the 11 goals we’ve scored came in the first half; only three came before the 60th minute. Again, I think of last year’s Copa América: starting slow and feeling the opposition out is a fine strategy until the opponent scores on you and you find yourself without momentum, let alone answers.
  • After two cameo appearances in the World Cup, I’m very concerned about Bruno Guimarães. Not so much for the good chances he missed against Cameroon (though scoring would likely have gone a long way towards fixing this issue), but because he just doesn’t seem like he’s mentally up to the task. In a lot of ways, he’s still playing better than Fred whenever he replaces him, but in others, he’s miles off the pace, like he wasn’t expecting the World Cup to be anywhere near this intense. He flubbed a lot of easy passes against Serbia; against Cameroon, he kept backing out of challenges like he expected fouls to be given, and on the play that resulted in him getting yellow carded, he seemed to totally underestimate the speed and guile of the Cameroonian player he was marking, who easily beat him to a loose ball. I’m getting some unpleasant shades of Hulk in 2014, who was also an awesome player at club level who always was too nervy to thrive for Brazil in pressure situations, as well as Fernandinho that same year. Much like Bruno and Fred, Fernandinho seemed an obvious upgrade on a clearly inferior starting midfielder in Paulinho… and he was for the most part, but he melted down under pressure just like everyone else in the 7-1.
  • I was pleasantly surprised that Dani Alves lasted all 90 minutes; much less pleasantly surprised at how poor some of his passing and crossing was. It’s like he’s now lost enough athleticism that the kind of zen he found around 2017-19, where he compensated for his no longer having elite-level speed and stamina by becoming much more intelligent about how he positioned himself and moved the ball and thus produced his best spell of play for Brazil, is itself behind him. (I say all this but, somehow, he covered more distance than any other Brazil player in the game.) Some of his crosses against Cameroon looked like he no longer knew how to get his body to produce enough zip on the ball.
  • With Alex Telles and Gabriel Jesus both seeing their tournaments end with knee injuries, we’re up to five injured players in just three games. This World Cup is unusually brutal on the players, but this is still unusual enough that I have to question Tite and his medical staff at least a little bit, especially after we had some of the same thing go on in 2018, where he didn’t drop a few players who weren’t 100% fit while he still could, and saw other players get hurt during the tournament itself.
  • On the plus side, I really like what I’ve seen from Gabriel Martinelli. He’s still too raw to rely upon, but there’s a lot to be said for a forward who can carry the ball forward on the run the way he can.
  • I know it’s a moot point because he got hurt just before the tournament, but I think our bench could’ve really used Coutinho. We can talk all we want about the talent of our group of young attackers, but few of them have demonstrated that they can actually produce moments of magic in key games for Brazil the way Coutinho did repeatedly in 2018 and even more recently. And Everton Ribeiro certainly hasn’t demonstrated that ability either.
  • I’ve got my eye another hill that could make for a nice little gravesite. I truly think Tite made the right decision in not calling Roberto Firmino. He would have been useless, or close to it, in this tournament. Yes, he’s scored a bunch for Liverpool this season, and you could even argue that the fact that most of them are tap-ins shows that he might have tucked away some of the simple chances Brazil has missed at this tournament. And, sure, if he’d been on the end of a couple of the chances Bruno missed against Cameroon, he might have buried them, and that would certainly not be worth nothing. But he wouldn’t have been on the end of those chances if he’d been playing in GJ’s place as a striker, because the bigger problem with the team right now is that the strikers aren’t the ones getting the open looks. (Also, no fucking way is he the obvious replacement for Neymar; what is Tim Vickery smoking?)
  • Also, a related point, y’all are being way too harsh on Pedro after 26 minutes in a game where the whole team didn’t play well. He may not be amazing, but I’ve seen him score lots of well-taken goals and contribute extremely well to the buildup many times. I think he’ll be a lot better in his future appearances.

Brazil vs. South Korea

Stadium 974, Doha, December 5, 2022

Kickoff: 2:00 PM EST / 4:00 PM BRT / 7:00 PM GMT

US TV/Streaming: FOX / foxsports.com/live; Telemundo / Peacock

Possible Starting Lineup: Alisson, Éder Militão (Daniel Alves), Marquinhos, Thiago Silva, Danilo; Casemiro, Lucas Paquetá; Raphinha, Richarlison, Neymar, Vini Júnior.

Injury and Suspension Report: Danilo has returned from injury, and reportedly so has Neymar; Alex Sandro (hip) has returned to training but will sit out this game. Alex Telles and Gabriel Jesus have been cut from the squad following the knee injuries they suffered against Cameroon. Nobody is suspended.

Discipline Report: Fred, Militão, and Bruno G. all have one yellow card.

Notes and Storylines

The big news ahead of tomorrow’s game is that Neymar is back, apparently. It’s an awfully quick turnaround for a guy who only returned to full training, what, yesterday? But Globo hints that he’ll be starting. Seems like an unnecessary risk when we have more challenging games ahead; I say save him on the bench if we still need a goal in the second half. He’s our best creative player, but even this misfiring team should be able to handle South Korea. If Neymar isn’t ready to start, I just hope Tite finally abandons the idea of using another forward in his place, as none of them have his creative ability. For the love of God, move Paquetá into the 10 spot and put in Bruno, or even Fred, alongside Casemiro.

Danilo will be back too, but with Alex Sandro still needing another game’s rest, Alex Telles now out for the rest of the tournament, and Dani Alves demonstrating against Cameroon that he’s officially too old to be trusted, we’re going to have to do some gymnastics at the fullback positions. It sounds like Danilo, who is two-footed and has played at left-back before, will shift to that side with Militão playing down the right again. It should be fine, but we were shaky down the left when we had to improvise Marquinhos there against Cameroon after Telles went off, and that’s where the goal came from.

If there’s a silver lining to this most recent, quite concerning performance, it’s that almost nobody who’s likely to start Monday’s game started this one, meaning our first-choice players are all pretty well-rested, none of them got hurt (though their potential backups did), and while Bruno and Militão joined Fred on one yellow card, nobody else did, particularly not Casemiro.

The other silver lining is that, on paper, there isn’t an easier round of 16 opponent than a South Korea side we beat 5-1 just six months ago. (Heck, we also beat them 3-0 without Neymar in late 2019.) Their sole win in their group came on the final matchday against a Portugal side that also rested most of their key starters; before then, they drew 0-0 with a pretty dour Uruguay side and lost 3-2 to Ghana. That said, they’ve probably played better than the results suggest; they went toe-to-toe with Uruguay and Portugal in terms of shots and massively outshot Ghana, though most of those shots came when they were chasing the game in the last 20 minutes plus stoppage time. They have a lot of quick players, most famously Heung-Min Son, and can press very aggressively or punish teams on the break.

And compounding that: my theory is that part of the reason why underdog teams are pulling so many surprises this year is that more of their players are playing in “smaller” leagues that didn’t push their schedules to the absolute breaking point to fit around the World Cup. The Japanese and Korean leagues, for example, ended one and two weeks respectively before the last round of club games in Europe, and with the AFC Champions League finishing in August, their players hadn’t been subjected to nearly as many punishing midweek games.

There’s a universe in which this game is the perfect palate cleanser for our tepid attacking performances in the group stage, where we come flying out of the gates, score early, break some of those ugly trends regarding our attacking potency, and rack up a big win to get more players on the scoresheet and settle some nerves, revitalizing the team ahead of more challenging games to come. There’s also one where this is just a regular old Brazil win that doesn’t rock the boat in that way, and a universe where we suffer a shocking exit. Most likely, I think, we’re headed for the second one. I really, really hope we can finally bust the streak of scoring two goals or fewer in World Cup games, but I’m kind of skeptical that it’s going to happen. I think it’s going to be a 2-0 win that still leaves us uncertain that this team can go anywhere close to all the way.