Midway through an unusually long, 12-day gap between Brazil’s last preparatory friendly against the USA and our Copa América opener against Costa Rica next Monday, the mood here on the Brazil World Cup Blog is: angst.
A poor display in that USA game prompted fresh doubts about new coach Dorival Júnior, all while we’ve watched Carlo Ancelotti, the coach the CBF originally tried and failed spectacularly to sign after the 2022 World Cup, win his fifth Champions League title, in the process of which his Real Madrid side found itself cornered in ways that have cost Brazil in major tournaments for twenty years, and yet always emerged unscathed. Since then, the Euros have started, and Germany and Spain’s impressive performances in their debut games suggest that they may each be working their way out of their respective decade of futility, all underscoring how much of an opportunity we squandered in 2022 when they both took themselves out of our potential path to the semifinals. Oh, and Ronaldinho came out of nowhere and blasted this current Brazil team as one of “the worst in recent years”, lacking both talent and leadership—criticisms it’s hard to argue with—only to then reveal it was all some sort of ham-fisted marketing stunt for deodorant?
Am I missing anything? I probably am. Anyways, I think the best way to explore all these concerns is to talk about Formula 1 instead.
For several years starting in 2014, the Mercedes team had, by far, the best car on the Formula 1 grid. It was so good, in fact, that barring the occasional mechanical failure, or the team’s drivers Lewis Hamilton and Nico Rosberg crashing into each other—which happened more than once—Mercedes could pretty much cruise to first and second place in every race for three years. Hamilton won the World Championship in 2014 and 2015, his second and third of an eventual seven (and counting), while Rosberg won his first title in 2016 and promptly retired, feeling that, having had to give his “absolute 110%” to achieve his lifelong dream, he didn’t want to continue sustaining that level of effort for another season.
At the time, it was easy to downplay Rosberg’s talent, and I did. Hamilton had already demonstrated his greatness, having competed for and won titles with other teams; Rosberg had not. Hamilton was a generational prodigy when it came to racing in the rain, often regarded as the purest test of skill in the sport of auto racing; Rosberg was not. In their time as teammates, competing head-to-head in equal cars, Hamilton had more poles, more wins, more fastest laps, more podiums, more points earned, and, of course, more championships. Hamilton’s narrow 2016 title loss was largely off the back of Mercedes’ only engine failure of the entire season, a cruel stroke of bad luck. In that context, it was very easy to dismiss Rosberg’s achievements. Any decent driver, it seemed, could run second in the Mercedes. Catch Hamilton on his off days, or get the better of him through pit strategy a few times a season, and they too could rack up 20 wins in three years and compete for titles all the while.
But then Mercedes replaced the retired Rosberg with Valtteri Bottas, a more-than-decent driver, who nonetheless absolutely could not keep up with Hamilton. In his five years as Hamilton’s teammate, Bottas had 10 wins. Hamilton averaged 10 wins per year in that time. More recently, the balance of power has shifted to the Red Bull team, and we’ve seen this dynamic play out once more with their drivers Max Verstappen and Sergio Pérez: while Verstappen put together the two most dominant seasons in the history of the sport in 2022 and 2023, smashing even many of Hamilton’s records, Pérez couldn’t even consistently join him in the top three.
In short, while Nico Rosberg was not quite on Lewis Hamilton’s level, and the dominance of their team made it easy to dismiss his achievements, to keep up with one of the best of all time, he had to be truly great himself—but it took a while for the rest of us to have the necessary context to see it.
I won’t go so far as to describe Tite as great. It’d be too generous to compare him to someone who actually won a world championship in his discipline when Brazil fans’ grievance with him was specifically about how he couldn’t. But doesn’t Rosberg’s tale remind you of what’s happened to Brazil since Tite left? It was easy to assume that any coach could win just as easily as Brazil; that any coach, when blessed with the likes of Neymar and Vini Jr. up front and Casemiro, Marquinhos, Éder Militão, etc. behind, could build a team that scores goals, controls games, and concedes few chances. But no: as we’ve seen ever since, the coach has a huge part to play in that.
And the contrast is all the harsher because the thing we’ve most obviously lacked since Tite left is exactly the thing he provided most of all: an immediate, baseline level of competence and organization. He took over the Seleção from Dunga in 2016 and improved every meaningful metric—attack, defense, results—overnight. I’m still impressed with he took a bunch of Brasileirão players he’d never worked with before and had them playing remarkably well after, like, one training session. His teams were always incredibly hard to beat, extremely well coordinated, and sometimes devastating going forward.
But in spite of that, Tite’s shortcomings proved to be exactly what we didn’t need. Over the course of a full season, or World Cup qualifying campaign, his teams’ general excellence shone through where other teams would stumble. But he never quite figured out how to excel in the few, specific, make-or-break games that define a national team’s success. He was Nico Rosberg having to race in the rain.
(This still feels a little unfair to Nico Rosberg.)
These next few paragraphs will probably not be terribly kind to Dorival Júnior. While I think his start to life as Brazil coach has had a lot of positives, and I’ll bet that even his harshest detractors would rate him higher than his interim predecessors Ramon Menezes and Fernando Diniz, his Brazil so far has still been one whose defending is chaotic; whose midfield, despite actually being present, nonetheless plays with fire defensively; whose star players are still not quite clicking; and which can only control the game in spurts. I’ll get into more detail about all that, along with some of the reasons to expect improvement, for a moment, but I’ll reiterate that it doesn’t compare especially favorably to Tite’s immediate accomplishments.
A few days ago, I wondered what we might learn from our pre-tournament friendlies. This seems like a good time to review the unanswered questions I posed.
Can Vini Jr. thrive in yellow? Thus far, still no. We’re reaping some of the benefits of giving him more of a starring role and the keys to the team, as he produced some impressive moments of terrorizing the US defense, but his decision-making in the box was absolutely terrible. He went for a lot of low-percentage shots rather than passing to teammates in far better positions, and when he did shoot from good positions, it looked like he was just hitting and hoping. As I mentioned the other day, it reminds me a bit of Hulk, who never seemed to be able to relax, get out of his own head, and get in the zone for Brazil. Vini is a better player, and he has the run of this team in the way Hulk does not, so hopefully he instead follows the example of Neymar at the 2013 Confederations Cup, when being given the number 10 seemed to transform him into a vastly better version of himself (and hopefully not for just a year this time).
The original question also asked about Gabriel Martinelli, who at least assuaged my worst concerns by scoring against Mexico. I wouldn’t be surprised if he makes some valuable contributions coming off the bench in the Copa América.
Can Endrick deliver? That goal against Mexico settled it for me. This kid is the real deal. Even when he didn’t score against the US, he was impressively dangerous thanks to his speed and eye for setting up his teammates. The question is whether, as a 17-year-old, he can bear the burden of leading the line for Brazil for a whole tournament. Having lost Richarlison to injury on the eve of the callup, Dorival opted for the untested Evanilson as his starting number 9, who, a couple moments of clever movement aside, was a ghost against Mexico. Rodrygo, meanwhile, played the same role against the US, and while he scored, he’s never proved himself capable of leading the line like that for a long stretch of games. I expect Rodrygo will start the next game, but he’ll be moved elsewhere to make room for Endrick before the Copa is over.
Can we live without Paquetá? Yes! The betting investigation is clearly weighing heavily on Paquetá’s mind; he has not played well at all this month. Fortunately, Andreas Pereira really does look like he can contribute in almost the same way; perhaps with a bit less physicality, but by the same token also with a bit less dart-without-feathers fouling. It’s great news, since with the evidence against him, it really does look like Paquetá may not be long for the footballing world. Even if it didn’t, Andreas deserves to start against Costa Rica on form alone.
Is Éderson for real? Jury’s still out, and I still need to watch him more. He seemed fine against Mexico, but with the midfield struggling in both games to corral the opposition, it was hard to tell whether he improved matters or not.
Can Brazil raise its game all the time? Among the questions I posed, this proved the biggest letdown. Drawing 1-1 against the US, a team that had just lost 5-1 to Colombia, prompted a lot of negativity, but the signs were there beforehand: Brazil continue to not play super well.
I see Dorival as providing something that Brazil have historically lacked more often than not: the ability to take a serious blow on the chin and not let it faze them. We went 2-0 down to Spain and had the game tied 15 minutes of clock later—and then responded to going 3-2 down in the 87th minute by finding a winner in the sixth minute of stoppage time. Then against Mexico, we responded to conceding a stoppage-time equalizer, having been 2-0 up at one stage, by immediately going up the other end and putting ourselves back in front.
This is a quality this team has often lacked. Out of curiosity, I dug through Brazil’s results since 2010 (as far back as SofaScore had easily accessible data for this kind of thing) looking for games where the opposition scored a late (arbitrary, but let’s say 70th minute or later) goal that tied the game or put them ahead, as well as games where Brazil fell two goals behind. I counted 16 games in which the former happened, and nine in which the latter happened. When Lucas Paquetá equalized with the last kick against Spain, that marked the first time Brazil had successfully responded to that sort of late gut punch with a goal of their own since a friendly against Austria almost 10 years ago. Endrick’s goal earlier in the game marked the first time we’d come from two goals down to tie a game since a World Cup qualifier against Paraguay eight years ago.
But, of course, to concede late equalizers and especially to go 2-0 down, you have to not play very well—you have to make mistakes, or get outthought tactically, or just let off the gas when you shouldn’t. And Brazil haven’t really played well under Dorival, certainly not with any consistency. His first game against England was probably his best start to finish; Spain put us through the wringer pretty much right up until we equalized almost out of nowhere; both Mexico and the USA outplayed us for long stretches. Tactically, he has the right idea in trying to get Brazil to play with an actual midfield again, and he’s seemed to largely select the right players. But the defense has been chaotic, the midfield has been disorganized and struggled to effectively shield the defense, and he’s yet to get the most out of Vini Jr. in attack.
Dorival is, of course, new to the job and still trying to incorporate his tactical ideas as well as a bunch of new players. The hope is that with more time to work on the training field—and there’s that unusually long, 12-day gap between the USA game and our Copa opener—he’ll be able to hammer out most of the kinks. So let me play armchair manager and give him some suggestions.
Suggestion one: Drop Paquetá and João Gomes from the midfield. Whether or not Dorival does this will say a lot about him. Both players started in both of the March games, and were part of what seemed to be the first-choice XI Dorival started against the USA. But this month’s friendlies showed us that both are pretty obviously inferior to other members of the squad. Paquetá, with the betting charges still looming over him, has looked distracted on the field, and particularly against Mexico there was a sharp distinction between Andreas Pereira’s play from the start—nearly putting Gabriel Martinelli through after 20 seconds, opening the scoring with a cracking effort—and Paquetá’s lack of alertness and hustle after coming on, with him turning the ball over before both of Mexico’s goals. Both he and Gomes have a bit of a “dart without feathers” problem (and I know that’s a phrase I overuse, but I just like it too much to stop; blame Tony Stewart for putting it in my head), where they let opponents slip by them and then dive way too vigorously into rash challenges, but that’s specifically been Gomes’ problem this month. Against the USA, he let himself get pulled up the field chasing the ball, and while Bruno Guimarães and Lucas Beraldo both bear blame for letting Christian Pulisic slip by them, it was Gomes who came in late and sloppy with the challenge that gave up the free kick—and he was lucky it wasn’t a penalty—from which Pulisic equalized. Not ten minutes beforehand, he’d been carded for committing almost exactly the same sort of low-percentage, from-the-back challenge on Gio Reyna. Unsurprisingly, Gomes didn’t survive the halftime break, with Douglas Luiz taking over and generally getting more acclaim for his control in the midfield (although the USA had their two best chances in the second half). I think it’s still an open question whether Luiz or Éderson makes the most sense as Gomes’ replacement; I’d lean Éderson for his height and slightly more defensive nature, especially since the midfield remains a bit porous without a true destroyer in there.
Suggestion two: Try Lucas Beraldo at left-back. This comes at the confluence of two of the problems with the defense under Dorival. One, his chosen left-backs haven’t been too impressive. Not that there are many quality, fit, Brazilian LBs to choose from right now (though he probably should have rewarded newly minted Scudetto winner Carlos Augusto with a callup), but neither Wendell nor Guilherme Arana has looked any great shakes so far either going forward or defending.
Two, while there are good reasons on paper to play Beraldo in the center—he knows Dorival from their time together at São Paulo, he’s paired with Marquinhos at PSG and their understanding is only bound to get better over the next few years—he’s also just… not looked quite cut out for games of this caliber yet. Never was this more apparent than when Spain’s Dani Olmo demolished him back in March (I won’t hold his late penalty on Dani Carvajal against him, as it was an extremely soft call), but as I mentioned above, we saw it again against the USA. I haven’t really watched him for PSG, so I don’t know whether this is also apparent in his play there or is a more specific problem with Brazil’s defensive scheme or the personnel around him, but it’s not great. However! What I do know is that he can also play left-back, and given that a) our left-backs aren’t great, as we’ve already established; b) Beraldo double-teaming an opponent with another center-back can’t be worse than a defensively porous left-back double-teaming an opponent with Beraldo; and c) it still keeps him on the field for at least some of that club chemistry with Marquinhos, I think it’s worth a try. I doubt he’s as good at playing LB as Éder Militão is at playing right-back, but given that we do have decent RBs and Militão is still getting up to speed from a serious injury, this seems like a more feasible experiment.
The other big swing defensively Dorival might fathom would be to try three at the back, maybe with some truly deranged set of wingbacks (how would Raphinha do on the left?), but I’m not sure that’s on the cards any time soon.
Suggestion three: Try two up top to centralize Vini Jr. Maybe this isn’t such a good idea alongside the “play a center-back at left-back” idea, but you know me; I’m unable to resist the siren call of two up top and a number 10 in the hole behind them. I love direct, vertical passing and playing my forwards in behind the defense, and having two of them in the middle of the pitch just makes it easier to play them in behind in a position where they can immediately threaten the opposing goal. Plus, of course, it allows for more interaction between your forwards, and when those forwards are Vini Jr. and Endrick, two players who look to combine with teammates and are also really, really fast, it seems to make all the sense in the world. Forget that successful through balls are really hard to pull off. Forget that the stats seem to show that getting to the endline and then pulling the ball back is the most effective attacking play in football right now. I want to see two really fast dudes playing each other in 1v1 against opposing goalkeepers all game long.
But seriously—while Vini has had his moments, he’s too isolated when playing all the way up against the touchline for Brazil, something that also always plagued Neymar (although far fewer of Vini’s talents are squandered when playing him so wide, as he is a terrific crosser but hardly a great central playmaker). Much like with my previous suggestion, the solution may lie not in something so radical as what I’m calling for, but rather subtle positional tweaks and more time building cohesion in training. Dorival’s job is to find at least a solution, and whether he makes the jump in our minds from “coach with a couple of promising games” to “coach who can actually build a good Brazil team” (not to mention whether or not we go far in the Copa América) depends a lot on whether he can find that solution in the next month.
And you know what, if Dorival ends up doing badly, I thought this picture of him was funny, so I whipped up a really shitty meme we can use to console ourselves.
Feel free to download and use it as you see fit.
Anyways…
Brazil’s Group Stage Matches
(All of these games will be broadcast in the US on FS1 and TUDN.)
Brazil vs. Costa Rica
SoFi Stadium, Inglewood, California, USA, June 24, 2024
Kickoff: 9:00 PM EDT / 10:00 PM BRT / 1:00 AM GMT
Brazil vs. Paraguay
Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, June 28, 2024
Kickoff: 9:00 PM EDT / 10:00 PM BRT / 1:00 AM GMT
Brazil vs. Colombia
Levi’s Stadium, Santa Clara, California, USA, July 2, 2024
Kickoff: 9:00 PM EDT / 10:00 PM BRT / 1:00 AM GMT
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).
My Expectations
We have our easiest game first, which will just make things worse if we don’t start well. And while Costa Rica have been pretty bad for the last few years, Brazil fans have only to think back to the last time we faced them, in the 2018 World Cup group stage, when a hideous attacking performance left us staring down the barrel of starting a World Cup with two straight draws right up until stoppage time. If Dorival has managed to iron out some of the issues we saw against Mexico and the USA, this ought to be a very comfortable victory. If he hasn’t, let the angst flow, especially because the games only get harder from here.
Game two is against Paraguay, who, again, really aren’t very good right now, but whom we haven’t managed to beat in 90 or even 120 minutes at the Copa América since 2001. Last comes Colombia, who are really good right now—partly thanks to not qualifying for the 2022 World Cup, they haven’t lost a game in over two years—and who we collapsed against last year in perhaps the nadir of Fernando Diniz’s ill-fated spell as coach. Adding to the fun, this game could very well determine who wins the group and thus avoids having to face Uruguay, another team that whooped Brazil under Fernando Diniz, in the quarterfinals.
I think the bare minimum objective is to make the semifinals, simply because that guarantees playing the maximum number of games, and every game will help this team come together. But there’s a good chance we’ll have to play two very, very tough games in a row just to get there, and losing the first of those could be just the gut-punch we need to also cost us the second.
We still have five days until the opening game, and who knows what bad news might arrive in the meantime in the form of questionable training lineups or key injuries or other players following Paquetá’s example and forgetting that they shouldn’t participate in sports betting. Enjoy the angst, everybody.
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