Once again, I’ve let my life get too busy and not left enough time to write up something proper for this week’s friendlies. In my defense, I’m not sure how many of us will be able to watch them legally, as I haven’t found any evidence that they’re actually going to be broadcast in the US.

Brazil vs. Guinea

Estadi Cornellà-El Prat, Barcelona, Spain, June 17, 2023

Kickoff: 3:30 PM EDT / 4:30 PM BRT / 7:30 PM GMT

Possible Starting XI: Alisson (Ederson), Danilo, Éder Militão, Marquinhos, Ayrton Lucas; Casemiro, Joelinton, Lucas Paquetá; Rodrygo, Vini Jr, Richarlison.

Brazil vs. Senegal

Estádio José Alvalade, Lisbon, Portugal, June 20, 2023

Kickoff: 3:00 PM EDT / 4:00 PM BRT / 7:00 PM GMT

Notes and Storylines

I don’t have time to write a lot here, so I’ll just note that this will be Brazil’s first game ever against Guinea and second against Senegal, the last being a 1-1 draw in 2019. Ramon Menezes remains the interim coach, fresh off a truly appalling loss to Israel in the quarterfinals of the U-20 World Cup. As it sounds like the CBF might be willing to wait for Carlo Ancelotti until June 2024, these two games might well be a referendum on Ramon as the interim manager—but even if he passes the test, the CBF had better find someone else to manage either the senior side or the Olympic team for the next year. Having to handle both the seniors and the U-20s has clearly hurt Menezes’ ability to coach either.

Anyways, the lineup for the Guinea game is mostly interesting for the two debutants in the starting lineup. Plenty has been said on here about Newcastle midfielder Joelinton; for now I just want to reiterate what some have said about how odd it is that he starts but his club teammate Bruno Guimarães does not. (Lucas Paquetá, Bruno’s former club teammate at Lyon, also starts, so we’re passing up on a lot of easy chemistry here.) As Globo’s piece on him puts it, Joelinton is a “volante de chegada”, a deeper-lying midfielder who makes late runs into the box to get into scoring position. You’ll recognize this as something Paquetá also does, something we all criticized Paulinho for doing, and arguably the core problem with how Brazilian coaches use the midfield right now. Inevitably, it seems like these “volantes de chegada” start camping out at the edge of the box and acting as extra forwards rather than actually putting in the work in midfield. We saw Tite do this with Paquetá and even Bruno at the World Cup, and in that horrible performance against Israel I mentioned earlier, Menezes had Andrey Santos essentially playing as part of two up top rather than helping out in a midfield that was being completely overrun.

(Not to mention, is that truly the best description of Joelinton’s game? I think part of the problem is that the Brazilian football intelligentsia collectively salivates at the idea of a midfielder who can make late runs into the box for some reason, utterly at the expense of their other virtues or lack thereof.)

The other new face is left-back Ayrton Lucas, who’s had some really nice moments for Flamengo recently but is, to me at least, still a pretty unknown quantity. He seems like he has the potential to either impress us or really, really suck, but hopefully we see more stuff like this.

I haven’t put any thought into these predictions, but I’m going to guess we beat Guinea 2-0 and draw Senegal 1-1. Enjoy the games, I guess! If you can find out how to watch them!