Well then. After the Tite era ended in such, uh, infuriating fashion in the quarterfinals of the World Cup, Brazil is about to take to the field with its first new manager in charge since 2016. Tite was, for all his many faults, clearly the outstanding Brazilian coach of his time—which is maybe less a credit to him than an indictment of his competition—and lacking any obvious successor, the CBF has a choice between two unorthodox options: either they hand the Seleção over to a fresh but unproven Brazilian manager and hope that his new ideas and skillset can overcome his lack of experience in the global game à la Lionel Scaloni for Argentina; or they bite the bullet, acknowledge that there is no Brazilian manager who has proven himself at the highest levels of the game, and hire a foreign coach for the first time in Brazil’s history.

Right now, they seem to be splitting the difference. Leading the team in Saturday’s game against Morocco is Ramon Menezes, a man who, before he led the under-20 side to victory in the South American Youth Championship last month, had achieved little distinction as a coach. But it seems very likely that he will be nothing more than a stopgap option, as rumors have Carlo Ancelotti leaving Real Madrid to take the job in the summer. Except that may not be finalized yet and the CBF may still be keeping tabs on the likes of Jorge Jesus, José Mourinho (ugh), and even some Brazilian coaches like Fernando Diniz.

For now, though, Ramon has the reins. What did he do with them? Well, he kind of made the case for avoiding another Brazilian coach:

The Squad

Goalkeepers: Ederson (Manchester City), Mycael (Athletico-PR), Weverton (Palmeiras).

Full-backs: Arthur (América-MG), Emerson Royal (Tottenham), Alex Telles (Sevilla), Renan Lodi (Nottingham Forest).

Center-backs: Ibañez (Roma), Éder Militão (Real Madrid), Bremer (Juventus), Robert Renan (Zenit).

Midfielders: André (Fluminense), Andrey Santos (Vasco), Casemiro (Manchester United), João Gomes (Wolverhampton), Lucas Paquetá (West Ham), Raphael Veiga (Palmeiras).

Forwards: Antony (Manchester United), Yuri Alberto (Corinthians), Rodrygo (Real Madrid), Rony (Palmeiras), Vini Júnior (Real Madrid), Vitor Roque (Athletico-PR).

Look, I’m fine with this squad. This is the most throwaway of games, lots of players who might have been here (Neymar, Marquinhos, Richarlison) are injured, others (particularly the host of Gabriéis at Arsenal) seem like they were left off at the behest of their clubs in the midst of a title race, and Ramon gave chances to a bunch of his U-20 players (Mycael, Robert Renan, Arthur, Andrey Santos, Vitor Roque). I thought that was nice! It’s also nice to see guys like Ibañez get integrated into the team.

But there’s a problem in the Brazilian club game that I’ll call Brazilian Coach Brain. (Pundit Brain? It might be just as much a pundit problem.) It’s this tendency to hyperfocus on the domestic scene—whose level is, as the Club World Cup keeps leaving us very much aware, much lower than that of the top European leagues—at the expense of paying attention to the global game. It’s a mindset that leads pundits and coaches alike to overestimate the ability of the players they watch in the domestic league every week and dismiss the ones they don’t deign to watch in Europe. It leads to pundits straight-facedly saying that Santos was a better team than Barcelona in the leadup to the 2011 Club World Cup final (Santos lost 4-0), to coaches calling up nobodies they worked with in the Campeonato Paulista over players competing for Premier League or Champions League glory, and, most recently, to pundits insisting that Palmeiras midfielders like Raphael Veiga and Danilo deserved a callup while barely examining why Bruno Guimarães, who had excelled for years at Lyon and Newcastle, could hardly crack Brazil’s starting lineup.

Jadson is better than Hernanes. Fred is better than Hulk. They’ll see. They’ll alllllll see.

— Mano Menezes (As imagined by Black Matt, like, 12 years ago now)

(Of course, 12 years on from that quote we had Brazilian pundits saying that a 36-year-old Hulk deserved to go to the 2022 World Cup because he was playing well for Atlético-MG…)

If we spend much longer with a Brazilian coach, I think there’s a good chance we find out just how bad this can get. Tite, for all his faults, was generally pretty good about this, certainly miles better than any of Brazil’s other coaches in the 2010s. (Remember Henrique Buss? I wish I didn’t!) He didn’t always put the best players in his starting XI, but he largely called up the players who most deserved to be called up for the two World Cups he coached. While he did sometimes cave to the pundits, as when he brought Hulk back as a last-minute injury replacement for a round of World Cup qualifiers in 2021, the key distinction is that the pundits kept calling for Hulk’s inclusion even after he was straight-up atrocious when he saw the field.

I’m getting a bit off topic here. The point is, Ramon’s made some selections that very much scream, “these are the players I’ve actually seen play”—but I can’t really blame him. He just spent all of January and February focused on a U-20 tournament, so of course he’s bringing along some of his stars from that squad and of course he hasn’t been keeping up as closely with the top level of the game for a little while. (And it’s great to see so much youth, even if I’m not sure how many of them are ready to play for the senior Seleção!) But he’s left off some seemingly obvious names (Bruno Guimarães? Gabriel Martinelli? Literally any new blood at left-back?) and included a few, shall we say, pundit’s darlings. Look, Raphael Veiga is fine. He does some good stuff. He scores a few crazy goals now and then. He also didn’t become a regular starter for Palmeiras until he turned 25. Some pundits may slobber over him, but his ceiling is surely that of a Lucas Lima or Leandro Damião at best: a player who gets a handful of appearances for Brazil based on good club form, does decently but not amazingly, and is dropped and completely forgotten as soon as his club form inevitably dips. Then there’s Mr. “We have Cristiano Ronaldo at home” himself, Rony, which is the selection that really gets my goat. Again, here’s a guy who’s pretty good but not amazing in Brazil, is already into his late twenties, but also didn’t even have Veiga’s level of hype within Brazil, is so short (an inch shorter than Lionel Messi) that it’s a serious black mark against his ability as a footballer, and struck me as a bit of a tool whenever I watched him play. Yuri Alberto, in at the last minute for the injured Richarlison, isn’t nearly as egregious—he only just turned 22, he has some potential, and Brazil still needs a reliable number 9—but he’s one of those young strikers who goes on hot streaks and then disappears for months at a time, and that’s a lot less excusable at 22 then it is at 18.

Look, what I’m really saying is that even we got Fernando Diniz as Brazil’s next coach, he’d absolutely be pulling some shit with his selections that would drive us all crazy. And I hate to say it, but he’d probably be doing it more than Tite did.

Brazil vs. Morocco

Stade Ibn Batouta, Tangier, Morocco, March 25, 2023

Kickoff: 6:00 PM EST / 7:00 PM BRT / 10:00 PM GMT

US Streaming: Uncertain. Galvão Bueno’s new YouTube channel will be streaming the game, but I can’t find confirmation that the stream will work anywhere outside of Brazil, though it sounds like it will. It seems Galvão will be joined by Zico and Cristiane in the commentary booth, which is neat.

Possible Starting XI: Ederson (Weverton); Emerson Royal, Éder Militão, Ibañez, Alex Telles; Casemiro, Andrey, Lucas Paquetá (Raphael Veiga); Rodrygo (Antony), Vini Júnior, Vitor Roque.

Prediction:

Lest we forget, Morocco had a better World Cup finish than us, becoming the first African team to reach the semifinals before losing the third-place game, and they’ve apparently called up the whole World Cup squad for this victory lap at home. They were not the most thrilling team going forward, but they showed themselves to be defensively resilient as they defeated Spain and Portugal in the knockout rounds. Facing them with a new coach and a thoroughly jumbled assortment of players, I’m not expecting a ton. My prediction is we start the 2026 World Cup cycle with a 0-0 draw.