Month: July 2024

Have a quick match thread for the women’s Olympic debut. They’re in a really tough group that also has Spain, who won the last World Cup, and Japan, who beat Spain 4-0 in that same World Cup. It’s also likely to be Marta’s last tournament for Brazil (though we’ve been here before), and we’ll all be wanting a better sendoff for her than last year’s grim World Cup exit.

Brazil vs. Nigeria

Nouveau Stade de Bordeaux, Bordeaux, France, July 25, 2024

Kickoff: 1:00 PM EDT / 2:00 PM BRT / 5:00 PM GMT

US TV: Telemundo

Possible Starting XI: Lorena; Antonia, Thais Ferreira, Rafaelle, Tamires; Vitória Yayá, Duda Sampaio, Adriana, Ludmila (Gabi Portilho); Marta, Gabi Nunes (Jheniffer).

The angst continues. Needing a win in the last group stage game against Colombia to win the group and avoid an extremely tough-looking quarterfinal against Uruguay, Brazil were lucky to manage a 1-1 draw in a performance that was quite possibly worse than Fernando Diniz’s disasterclass against them last November. At least in that game Brazil got forward effectively, even as Colombia overran the nonexistent midfield and created plenty of shots of their own; this time, Colombia overran a far more present midfield that also couldn’t create anything going forward.

Now we face an equally high-flying Uruguay side that might pose a similar test just days after we failed the first one. And on top of that, Vini Jr. got his second yellow card of the tournament and will be suspended for this quarterfinal. Oh, and the ref is Argentinian. Oh dear!

Brazil vs. Uruguay

Allegiant Stadium, Las Vegas, Nevada, USA, July 6, 2024

Kickoff: 9:00 PM EDT / 10:00 PM BRT / 1:00 AM GMT

US TV: FS1, Univision

Lineup info TBD

Rather than write another 4,000 words about how this game might go, I’m just going to focus on one question for this preview: how should Dorival Jr. replace Vini Jr.? Vini hasn’t had the best of tournaments—nobody in the front line has—but he’s still our top scorer and managed to draw a clear, uncalled penalty against Colombia that may well have made the difference (although the way Colombia were playing, I think they would have just kept the pressure up until they tied the game either way.) Replacing him may well be impossible, but it could well be a blessing in disguise. As I see it, there are three main ways Dorival could approach this: