It’s a new year, and that means it’s time to look over everything we can expect from the Brazil national team in the 12 months ahead, in a regular feature I would like to call, “oh, whoops, the last time I did this was actually five years ago“.

Anyways, here’s what’s on the docket for the Seleção:

January-February: The South American U-20 Championship

It’s become a tradition for me in odd-numbered years: settling down on some January evenings, opening up a sketchy, under-the-table streaming site, and dodging an onslaught of popup ads for gambling and porn sites to watch Brazil’s newest young generation in action. I first got around to doing this in 2011, and let me tell you, I got into this tradition at a bad time. That 2011 team, which somehow managed to free Neymar from his club obligations at Santos and supplemented him with Oscar, Casemiro, Danilo, Alex Sandro, and Lucas Moura, who announced himself in the final game with a hat-trick that briefly made us all think he might be as good as Neymar, was genuinely magical. It was also Brazil’s third-straight win in the tournament, their 11th overall, and capped a stretch of 18 tournaments, dating back to 1977, in which Brazil won nine times, finished second six other times, and never ended up worse than fourth, nowadays the last spot that will earn a team entry into that year’s U-20 World Cup. In that context, what’s happened since is almost unfathomable: Brazil failed to qualify for the U-20 World Cup in three of the next four editions, and in 2013 they even failed to advance out of the first round for the first time since 1975.

On their fifth try (the 2021 tournament never happened thanks to COVID), they finally won it all again in 2023, which I have to assume is what’s kept Ramon Menezes in charge of Brazil’s youth teams, because it sure hasn’t been anything he’s done since. Brazil crashed out of that year’s U20 World Cup in hideous fashion in the quarterfinals and then failed to qualify for the 2024 Olympics after having won gold in the previous two editions, all under Ramon’s watch. And yet he’s still in command a year later. Actually, forget what I said about his 2023 win. I think Ramon is still in the job because the CBF, wracked as it is with scandal, an ongoing question about whether president Ednaldo Rodrigues will complete his term, and a comically botched and also ongoing effort to hire a competent coach for the senior team, has just completely forgotten about the junior teams.

Unfortunately, that means we have to deal with Ramon and all his shortcomings as a coach, not least of which is the team he’s called up. It’s hard to know how much of the absence of Brazil’s most interesting U-20 players is his fault. Teams no longer give up their players easily for this tournament; long gone are the days when Santos let Neymar miss the first few weeks of their season for it, and it’s hard to see Real Betis or Real Madrid letting Vitor Roque or Endrick go overseas in the middle of the European season. But Estêvão, far and away Brazil’s most exciting under-20 player, is still in Brazil right now, and he’s not in the squad either; nor are Vitor Reis, Kauã Elias, Lorran, Esquerdinha, or many of the players in this age group who’ve broken through at the senior level.

Also, we can see yet another manifestation of an insidious trend: Brazil coaches, at every level and for both sexes, are calling up fewer and fewer midfielders, almost like the 4-2-4 is the official formation the CBF is trying to get everybody to use. I might have written a thing about why that’s a bad idea. Combine all this with a tough first round—Brazil’s in a group with Argentina, Colombia, and Ecuador—and I could definitely see things blowing up in Ramon’s face. At least the tournament’s actually available to watch through legitimate means in the US for once. TUDN is broadcasting some of the games (mostly Argentina’s, it seems, but they play Brazil) and ViX is streaming all the rest. Frankly, I’m just going to pay the nine bucks for a month’s subscription and enjoy being able to watch the games on my TV. No more dodging spam popups for this guy! (Now just watch Brazil fail to make it to the second round and leave me feeling like I wasted my money.)

…Anyway. Here’s the squad for your reference:

Goalies
Felipe Longo – Corinthians
Otávio – Cruzeiro
Robert – Atlético-MG

Fullbacks
Chermont – Santos
Pedro Lima – Wolverhampton
José Guilherme – Grêmio
Leandrinho – Vasco

Center-Backs
Anthony – Goiás
Bordon – Lazio
Iago – Flamengo
Jair Paula – Santos

Midfielders
Bidon – Corinthians
Gabriel Carvalho – Internacional
Kauan Rodrigues – Fortaleza
Moscardo – Stade de Reims

Forwards
Alisson Santana – Atlético-MG
Deivid Washington – Chelsea
Gustavo Prado – Internacional
Nathan Fernandes – Grêmio
Pedrinho – Zenit
Rayan – Vasco
Ricardo Mathias – Internacional
Wesley Gassova – Al-Nassr

March, June, September: World Cup Qualifying

The fact that we’re sweating this at all is an indictment of many people, but at the moment I choose to turn my ire towards Dorival Júnior, whose hapless coaching probably cost us points against at least Paraguay and Venezuela, if not Uruguay, and also led us to an embarrassingly early exit at last year’s Copa América—and perhaps worst of all, doesn’t give me complete confidence that he won’t find some way to fuck up what is still a reasonably comfortable position despite all the dropped points. After all, we’re still five points clear of missing out on an automatic qualifying spot, though that could evaporate quickly. Look at the rest of the schedule, and particularly the next two games. Do you trust Dorival to even get two points from those two games?

March 20: Colombia home

March 25: Argentina away

June 6: Ecuador away

June 10: Paraguay home

September 4: Chile home

September 9: Bolivia away

March-April: South American U-17 Championship

This probably won’t draw nearly as much of my attention as the U-20 championship, simply because someone who looks good at age 17 isn’t as likely to succeed at the pro level than someone who looks good at age 20, but maybe I should pay more attention. After all, with how many top players have been kept out of U-20 squads in recent years, the U-17 teams have often been a truer reflection of Brazil’s talent at the level. Recent U-17 teams have showcased the likes of Vini Jr, Yan Couto, Estêvão, Vitor Reis, Good Paulinho, and Éder Militão. I wonder who will end up emerging this year.

May: Women’s South American U-17 Championship

I don’t have a ton to add here, except that this is a big year for youth tournaments. Got lots of ’em on the docket, at least if we qualify for all the World Cups.

June-July: Club World Cup

While this doesn’t directly involve the Seleção, the redesigned Club World Cup will be the best measure we’ve ever had of where Brazilian clubs stack up against the rest of the world. For years, we’ve had to make do with a Club World Cup that gave the Copa Libertadores winners the chance—if they first won a semifinal that became far more difficult over the years, maybe because the rest of the world got better, maybe because moving the Libertadores final later in the year created a horrific schedule crunch for the winners—to play the best team in Europe.

Now, with that old tournament rebranded as the Intercontinental Cup and the Club World Cup reimagined as a 32-team affair with a group stage, we’ll have a much bigger sample size to work with. The four Brazilian clubs are guaranteed at least 12 games in the group stage, five of which will be against European clubs. That’s already more competitive games against Europeans than Brazilian clubs could even hope to have in four years of the previous format. Add in all the times a Brazilian club failed to win the Libertadores, or failed to reach the Club World Cup final, and you have to go all the way back to 2012 to find the last five competitive club games between Brazil and Europe. (That fifth game, Corinthians’ Club World Cup win over Chelsea, is also the last time a South American club beat a European one in a competitive setting.) And we may well get more than five, because I’d think Palmeiras, Flamengo, and Fluminense are all in groups they should have a good chance of advancing from and into the knockout stage. (Botafogo, who have to play both Atlético Madrid and PSG, might be fucked.)

July-August: Copa América Femenina

The women’s team actually has a major tournament to look forward to, as the Copa América’s four-year cycle has moved up a year to make room for a new set of World Cup qualifiers. Brazil, as hosts of the next Women’s World Cup, don’t actually have to play those qualifiers, so this Copa América is the biggest thing on the docket. Although given that Brazil have won eight of the nine Copa América Femeninas that have ever been held, winning 47 of the 50 games they’ve played in the history of the tournament, it has little use as a true measure of Brazil’s competitive quality; nobody else in South America is good enough to give us a decent challenge. The USA remains the gold standard in women’s soccer, as last summer’s Olympic gold medal match reminded us.

Fortunately (or not) for us, two April friendlies against them in California will be a better measure of whether we’ve improved since last August. There are also women’s FIFA dates in February (for which Brazil doesn’t have any matches scheduled yet, it seems), May into June, and November into December.

September-October: U-20 World Cup

If we make it, obviously.

October, November: Further FIFA Dates, Both U-17 World Cups

No more qualifiers, so these dates will serve for friendlies not yet arranged, unless, God forbid, we finish seventh and have to go through the inter-confederation playoffs.

Hopefully we can instead focus solely, and have reasons to focus on, on the U-17 World Cups. The women’s edition starts in October and carries into November, while the men’s tournament takes place entirely in November.

Questions To Be Answered

These don’t necessarily tie into any single event on the footballing calendar, but they’ll be worth keeping an eye on across the whole of 2025.

What happens if Carlo Ancelotti actually gets fired? The CBF spent the year after the 2022 World Cup making an unsuccessful and generally pretty embarrassing play for Ancelotti to coach the Seleção, out of which sprung the successive messes of Ramon Menezes, Fernando Diniz, and Dorival Júnior’s tenures in charge of the Seleção. Dorival, though he’s been nowhere near good enough, at least appears to have stabilized in the role for now. But Real Madrid aren’t exactly having the best of seasons, enduring an extremely rocky Champions League group stage and getting absolutely whooped by Barcelona in both Clásicos so far.

Don’t put it past Ancelotti and Real to get their shit together and surge to yet another Champions League trophy, but if that doesn’t happen, his days might well be numbered. Even if he makes it to the end of the season, there are reports (reports he denies) that he’ll leave the club afterward. And if that happens, things could get awkward. Will the CBF make another play for his services if Dorival continues sucking? How late in the cycle would they be willing to switch out a coach? If Ancelotti leaves Real at the end of the season, he’d only be available for Brazil’s last two qualifiers. Imagine the nightmare scenario where Dorival’s done such a bad job that Brazil needs those two games to qualify. Even Mr. Eyebrows himself might not be keen on trying to turn that mess around.

Will Lucas Paquetá and Luiz Henrique get banned? Both are accused of deliberately getting yellow cards to help Paquetá’s family members win bets, with Paquetá’s charges coming first and seeming closer to some sort of resolution. He faces a hearing in March where he might face a lifetime ban from the sport. The authorities don’t seem to be going after Luiz Henrique as aggressively; he has yet to be charged. It certainly hasn’t stopped him from signing for Zenit St. Petersburg. But the evidence suggests he was part of the same betting ring, and like Paquetá, he now plays regularly for Brazil, albeit in a position where he isn’t as likely to be missed if he does get banned.

Can Ronaldo win the CBF presidency? O Fenômeno threw his hat into the ring last month, raising the specter of the first CBF presidential election with more than one candidate since 1989. It’s about time somebody shook up the CBF, too: decades of decrepit, corrupt leaders have helped turn Brazil into a footballing backwater, and though Romário says current president Ednaldo Rodrigues has done away with the corruption (O Baixinho seems like he might be one of those “it’s only corruption if I’m not doing it” sorts in his political career, so take his word with a grain of salt), that presidency has been perhaps the most catastrophic yet, with questions over the legitimacy of his election causing a row with FIFA that appears to have stalled the federation’s ability to actually do any meaningful governance.

All that aside, Ronaldo might be an actually decent candidate for the job, having of course played for Brazil and also had some experience on the management side through his majority ownership stakes in Real Valladolid and Cruzeiro; the highers-up at the CBF, by contrast, tend to be effectively career politicians who came up up through state football federations or, uh, married João Havelange’s daughter. That said, there are several things standing in the way of Ronaldo’s election hopes. One is simply that his stake in the two teams mentioned above, as well as his involvement in the management and rights of several footballers including Gabriel Jesus, represents a conflict of interest. Another is that the CBF’s constituent state federations, which hold a majority of the presidential votes, historically vote as a bloc to guarantee victory for their chosen candidate, which is why nobody has even bothered to run against them in the past.

Is young Brazilian talent going to keep disappearing into a black hole? Over the past year or two, teenage Brazilians who’ve signed with clubs abroad have generally gone down one of four paths.

  • Path one, the best path: they don’t play very much, but at least do a decent job when they do play; this is what’s happened with Endrick and Vitor Roque.
  • Path two: they barely play at all for their new clubs; Luis Guilherme, Gabriel Moscardo, and Deivid Washington are among those in this boat.
  • Path three: it’s impossible to tell whether they would be playing, because they’ve been hurt the whole time. This is mostly a Brentford thing: both of the intriguing Brazilians they signed last summer, Gustavo Nunes and Igor Thiago (not a teenager but meeting the same fate), immediately got injured and have barely played.
  • Path four is the most ominous: they sell out for the Middle East. Ângelo is the most notable example so far: he joined Chelsea, immediately got loaned out to Strasbourg, played pretty regularly for a season, and then cut bait and signed with Al-Nassr, all before turning 20. The signs were there that he wasn’t going to turn out nearly as special as we’d hoped, but this will still stunt whatever development he might have had. But he’s not alone: Al-Nassr signed Wesley Gassova, part of the U20 squad we’ll watch in just a few days’ time, during the same transfer window, and Internacional just sold 17-year-old midfielder Gabriel Carvalho to fellow Saudi club Al-Qadsiah.

With Estêvão, the most exciting teenage Brazilian in some time, set to join Chelsea in July, we can only hope that he can carve a more successful path than these.

Does Neymar have anything left in the tank? After, effectively, almost seven straight years of constant injuries and his fitness slowly degrading, Neymar seems like a hollow shell of his former self. In his last brief appearance between injuries, he was jumping away from contact like he feared any slightest touch might do him in. (It didn’t work; he went off injured and was out for a month.) The latest rumors have him returning to Santos1, the club that raised him, on loan for six months, effectively repeating what Robinho did in 2010 to get playing time ahead of the World Cup. The Campeonato Paulista and Copa do Brasil should give him a chunk of relatively easy games to find some form again (or turn an ankle on a shoddy pitch). But if he can’t do it against Água Santa, it doesn’t bode well for him ever being able to do it against better opposition again.

When will Marta call it quits? Marta seems to have grown unsure of her previous plan to retire from the national team at the end of 2024, as the prospect of playing the 2027 Women’s World Cup on home soil might just be too tempting. Every time she looks like she’s finally too old to keep going, she tends to do something absolutely amazing, so she may still have some miles left in the tank.

Lastly: I Want To Try Something

I mentioned this a while back, but since I can never write as much here as I’d like (and every time I do, I end up writing several thousand words more than I intended), I’d love to open the blog up to a few longer-form guest pieces, much like Black Matt back in the day. I’m attaching a simple Google form that asks who you are and what you’d like to cover. I’ll be dusting off an editor’s hat I haven’t worn in a while, so bear with me through the process, but I’m asking for at least a couple sentences’ worth of a brief pitch. If you’d like an example of what I’d like to see, here’s how I might pitch the next piece I’m hoping to write on here:

“Long-range goals are plaguing the Seleção and its goalkeepers. Starting with June’s friendly against the USA, five of the seven goals Brazil have conceded were from outside the box. I want to see if I can determine some underlying cause. Are they Dorival’s fault, the result of some tactical shortcoming? A problem with the ‘world-class’ goalkeepers we can never seem to fully rely on? Simply a run of awful luck? Let’s not forget we also conceded noteworthy long-range goals in the last two World Cups; is there an even deeper-lying issue at play? I want to dig into both this recent rash of long-range goals conceded under Dorival and these noteworthy older examples and see what I can learn from them.”

(You can tell I haven’t yet looked into this issue enough to come to the ultimate conclusion or firm position I’d want to argue. If you do have a clearer position on your chosen topic, be sure to make that clear too!)

Here’s the form if you’re interested.

  1. Or maybe to the MLS’s Chicago Fire, in which case the calculus is much the same as it is for Santos. Or he might just spend six months barely playing for Al-Hilal and running down his contract. ↩︎