Recontesting the Copa América final, again.

Brazil vs. Peru

Estadio Nacional del Perú, Lima, October 13, 2020

Kickoff: 8:00 PM EDT / 9:00 PM BRT / 12:00 AM GMT

US TV / Streaming: Pay-per-view only

Likely Starting Lineup: Weverton; Danilo, Thiago Silva, Marquinhos, Renan Lodi; Casemiro, Douglas Luiz, Coutinho; Neymar, Roberto Firmino, Everton Cebolinha (Richarlison).

Bench: Ederson, Santos, Gabriel Menino, Felipe, Rodrigo Caio, Alex Telles, Fabinho, Bruno Guimarães, Éverton Ribeiro, Matheus Cunha, Richarlison (Everton Cebolinha), Rodrygo.

Notes and Storylines

The Seleção is back at last.

Brazil vs. Bolivia

Arena Corinthians, São Paulo, October 9, 2020

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

US TV / Streaming: Pay-per-view only

Likely Starting Lineup: Weverton; Danilo, Thiago Silva, Marquinhos, Renan Lodi; Casemiro, Douglas Luiz, Coutinho; Neymar (Éverton Ribeiro), Roberto Firmino, Everton Cebolinha.

Bench: Ederson, Santos, Gabriel Menino, Felipe, Rodrigo Caio, Alex Telles, Fabinho, Bruno Guimarães, Éverton Ribeiro (Neymar), Matheus Cunha, Richarlison, Rodrygo.

Notes and Storylines

FIFA and CONMEBOL just greenlit October’s round of South American World Cup qualifiers, meaning the Seleção is going to play for the first time in eleven months: first at home against Bolivia and then away to Peru, tentatively scheduled for the 9th and 13th of the month respectively.

Unfortunately, the COVID-19 pandemic has hit South America hard, particularly Brazil (gosh, I wonder why), which now has more deaths from the virus than any country except the United States. This is a potential issue for European clubs, who will be obligated to release their players for two weeks and then potentially lose them for at least two more weeks when they have to quarantine upon returning from hotspot countries like Brazil and Peru (which actually has an even worse per capita death rate right now). Even obligated by FIFA to let their players travel, they may find sneaky ways to get around it (like how English players always get conveniently injured for 10 days during international breaks) or just ask players to sit out.

The result is that Tite might end up having to draw from Brazil-based players more than he’d like, and in a worst-case scenario, we might end up seeing a squad with only Brazil-based players, like that 2017 friendly against Colombia to commemorate the Chapecoense plane disaster.

We spent months voting, and at last we have chosen a winner. Winning 53% of the vote over that Carlos Alberto goal, Pelé’s first goal in the 1958 World Cup final against Sweden, Brazil’s third and thus decisive goal in a 5-2 win, is the greatest Seleção goal of all time.

I’ve already said everything I had to say about this goal in the last post, so let’s just take this opportunity to bask in finally having chosen a winner.

If you want to look over the bracket, that’s here; my spreadsheet with all the goals that were nominated is here. I’m thinking of creating a post listing every goal in the bracket later on, but that many videos and GIFs may take a deadly toll upon any web browser that tries to view it, so perhaps it’ll just be a YouTube playlist or something.

For now, let’s use the comments celebrate the greatest goal in the history of the Brazil national team and discuss the start of the 2020/21 club season. With Brazil back in action in October, it won’t be long until I’ll have some actual Seleção news to post, and maybe we’ll soon have a few more worthy goals to talk about.