Brazil will play two friendlies this week, against Mexico tonight and the USA on the 12th, to prepare for the Copa América. That’s not unusual in the slightest. What is unusual is that after those games, the team will have almost two full weeks before returning to action in the Copa itself. It’s a strangely long break for games that will be played with the same squad as the Copa, and it means Dorival Júnior will have extra time and training sessions to mull over what happened in those friendlies and make adjustments before the games get serious.

With that in mind, here are a few questions we might hope to answer in these friendlies, along with the match info and the available players. Dorival has already said he’ll be using very different lineups for the two games, and it seems this will manifest in a full B-team taking the field tonight against Mexico.

Brazil vs. Mexico

Kyle Field, College Station, Texas, USA, June 8, 2024

(Fun fact: this is Texas A&M University’s football stadium, and with its seating capacity of over 102,000, this could well be the largest crowd for a Brazil game in decades.)

Kickoff: 8:30 PM EDT / 9:30 PM BRT / 12:30 AM GMT

US TV/Streaming: TUDN/Univision, FuboTV, Fox Deportes

Likely Starting XI: Alisson, Yan Couto, Éder Militão, Bremer, Guilherme Arana; Éderson, Douglas Luiz, Andreas Pereira; Savinho, Gabriel Martinelli, Evanilson.

Brazil vs. USA

Camping World Stadium, Orlando, Florida, USA, June 12, 2024

Kickoff: 7:00 PM EDT / 8:00 PM BRT / 11:00 PM GMT

US TV: TNT, Telemundo

The Squad

Goalies: Alisson (Liverpool), Bento (Athletico-PR), Rafael (São Paulo).

Fullbacks: Danilo (Juventus), Yan Couto (Girona), Guilherme Arana (Atlético-MG), Wendell (Porto).

Center-Backs: Beraldo (PSG), Bremer (Juventus), Éder Militão (Real Madrid), Gabriel Magalhães (Arsenal), Marquinhos (PSG).

Midfielders: Andreas Pereira (Fulham), Bruno Guimarães (Newcastle), Douglas Luiz (Aston Villa), Éderson (Atalanta), João Gomes (Wolverhampton), Lucas Paquetá (West Ham).

Forwards: Endrick (Palmeiras), Evanilson (Porto), Gabriel Martinelli (Arsenal), Pepê (Porto), Raphinha (Barcelona), Rodrygo (Real Madrid), Savinho (Girona), Vini Jr (Real Madrid).

The Questions

Can the players who aren’t clicking thrive?

Dorival’s squad selection was about as good as you can hope for. He rewarded in-form players wherever he found him (though he needed the prodding of CONMEBOL expanding the squad size from 23 to 26 to bring in a couple of the most deserving), didn’t give too many spots to questionably deserving players based in Brazil, and left out historically successful players whose fitness or recent form didn’t warrant their inclusion (namely Casemiro and Neymar, who a different coach might have made a whole song-and-dance of including right up until it became crystal clear he wouldn’t be back fit in time). Still, there are two players I’d like to call out here. One is Vini Jr., and this obviously isn’t about his form, but rather the fact that he still hasn’t really excelled for Brazil. I talked about this at length back in March, so I won’t belabor the point here. But, until he finally starts excelling for Brazil, the question will continue to be why our biggest star—quite possibly soon to be Brazil’s first Ballon D’Or winner in almost twenty years—can’t put it all together when he’s wearing yellow.

The other is Gabriel Martinelli, who had something of a down year for Arsenal, especially after returning from an injury that sidelined him in March. His inclusion was thus something of a surprise, especially when Dorival called up a full complement of wingers besides him. He does have some good performances in yellow going for him; he managed to make some important contributions amongst the colossal mess of the Fernando Diniz era, more so than Vini could, for example. But if he carries over his recent club form, his inclusion ahead of the likes of Matheus Cunha is only going to look more foolish.

Can Endrick produce consistently?

Endrick well and truly announced himself in the March friendlies, scoring decisive goals against both England and Spain. Then he went back to Palmeiras and largely failed to back up that form. Having scored two goals in a week for Brazil, he’s subsequently scored just three goals in two months and 16 games for his club. You can spin this either way: on the one hand, Abel Ferreira has never seemed to know what to do with Endrick and he’s already given signs that he’ll thrive in a different environment; on the other, maybe those two goals in March—a tap-in from a rebound and a deflected strike through traffic—were nothing more than a flash of good fortune.

I think it’s certainly a better dilemma to have than Vini Jr.’s. I’d rather be exceeding expectations than not living up to them, and despite the hype surrounding him, Endrick is still all potential rather than finished product. But those goals in March raised our expectations just a little bit. It won’t take too many games producing like he did at Palmeiras to send them crashing back down to earth.

How bad will it be for us if Lucas Paquetá gets banned from pro football?

Lucas Paquetá was one of Brazil’s standout performers in those tough March games, coming up clutch with big defense-splitting passes and a last-minute penalty to clinch a draw with Spain. Unfortunately, he’s since been charged with deliberately drawing yellow cards to manipulate the betting market, and the English FA reportedly seeks to ban him from football for life. With the case unlikely to receive any sort of resolution for months to come, Paquetá is free to play for Brazil this summer.

But after that…? We certainly can’t count on him at the World Cup unless he either gets acquitted or his lawyers manage to drag out the case indefinitely. Thus it’s worth paying attention, not just in these friendlies but all month, to his possible replacements. Andreas Pereira did an admirable job of this against England, playing exactly the same sort of incisive passes, and I have to think the looming possibility of losing Paquetá for good means he’ll get even more playing time than he would otherwise. Then there’s Pepê, whose career I have not followed closely since he excelled with Brazil’s U-23s in the 2021 Pre-Olympic Tournament. Whereas in that tournament he was the speedy little guy who came off the bench to set up late goals on the counter, seems to have folded the speed and dribbling I remember into the skillset of a central attacking midfielder, a tantalizing combination. He has the blessing of those on here who’ve watched him, so I’m curious to see how he can do.

In any case, with Paquetá likely getting a rest against Mexico, we should get some answers soon.

Have you guys been right all along about this Éderson guy?

I have to confess: I still have not properly watched Éderson. Yeah, I tuned in to the Europa League final, but I could only half watch it. So I’m still in the dark on a guy who’s been the absolute darling of our comment section for the last year or so. Y’all have been talking about how good he is as an all-action midfielder who also scores the occasional goal, essentially another Bruno Guimarães, for so long, and I still haven’t gotten around to see it for myself. That should change tonight. I hope I’m impressed! I’ve already talked about how much I like Dorival’s emphasis on the midfield, and his selections have reinforced that we actually do have some decent midfielders coming up, but I still have some concerns. João Gomes is kind of short, and him and Paquetá have a little bit of the dart-without-feathers thing going on when they try to defend. (In Paquetá’s case, maybe he’s just trying to get some more yellow cards for his betting pals?) My personal jury is still out about everything else, but Éderson is at least tall, which is always nice.

And as long as we’re talking new(ish) faces with hype, a shoutout to Sávio, who made his debut against England in March but is getting his first start tonight, and comes with plenty of buzz following a true breakout season with Girona; and to Evanilson, who himself will get the chance to prove that his impressive goalscoring numbers were more than just a product of playing in Portugal.

Will Brazil play well when the stakes are lower?

This might seem like an odd question, but hear me out. Brazil gave a good showing in Dorival’s first two games, tough matchups against England and Spain. Even against Spain, when they were outplayed for large chunks of the game, the team still had the fight to push hard and come back from 2-0 down. But these were Dorival’s first games in charge, against World Cup winners, after a brutal 2023 that left Brazil desperate to prove they could go back to competing at the highest level—of course the team was going to give it everything.

But in friendlies against some mid-level national teams? Especially friendlies right before an important tournament? And at least the first of which is going to feature essentially an all-new starting XI as Dorival gives his stars a rest? There’s every reason to take these games a little easier, not get out of second gear, and not worry ourselves too much if that results in a dull draw or uninspiring win. Except that would worry me, because we just lived through this with Tite. Tite very rarely pushed his Brazil side to have that extra little bit of intensity, to really go for the jugular, in the relatively easier games in which they could have honed those instincts—and so, when his teams found themselves needing to summon that level of intensity and ruthlessness in tougher games, they found they couldn’t. (Leave aside that the one time his Brazil really did crank things up for an extended period, in the year or so before the 2022 World Cup, they still couldn’t sustain it in the World Cup itself.)

Dorival started as he should mean to go on—building a Brazil side that plays direct, aggressive football and is capable of game-changing bursts of intensity even when otherwise outplayed. If that isn’t at least somewhat in evidence in these friendlies, I’ll start to worry that it won’t be evident at the Copa itself. And even if he won’t want Brazil to push quite as hard in these friendlies, the bar to clear is definitely lower. Mexico, in particular, are terrible right now. I’ve watched most of their recent games against the USA (they haven’t beaten their biggest rivals since before COVID) and they barely even threatened the American goal in any of them. Uruguay wrecked them mere days ago. They’ll want to atone for that fiasco, and Mexico have a long history of stepping up their game against Brazil, but based on recent evidence, even our B-team, with little time playing together, should be more than capable of rolling to an easy 2-0 or 3-0 victory.

As for the USA, they have one of their best generations ever, but they’re clearly held back by a mediocre coach, Gregg Berhalter (never trust a Gregg with an extra “g”), who can’t seem to get the team to play as well as the sum of their parts. Sound familiar? To be fair, Tite never got in a lengthy spat with Vini Jr.’s parents over his disappointing World Cup performances. (And to be fair to Berhalter in turn, he seems to have never repeated the abusive behavior the Reynas accused him of, although I think U.S. Soccer should still not have renewed his contract simply for the quality of the team’s performances.) Anyways, with something closer to the first-choice team likely to be starting that game, I think we should win that 2-0 without much trouble.