“1430 Steps to Brazilian Redemption” The
Diary of a Heartbroken Brazil
fan – Day 3 (11/07/2014)
I woke up to the sound of rain today and left
for work under grey and miserable looking skies. Conditions that are incredibly
reflective of my current mood. My wife says that living with me right now is
like living with a constant grey cloud, so perhaps that’s apt.
I read an article in the Evening Standard
yesterday by Brazilian journalist Edgar Alencar, who works for Globo TV in
Brazil
. I always love reading the views of Brazilian journalists when it comes to the
national team, as they never pull any punches, tell it how it is and give
reasoned and well thought out views.
Edgar’s view, like Romario’s, was that there
are problems within the CBF that need to be addressed if
Brazil are to
ever recover from their current predicament. He also stated that
Brazil had gone away from the highly organised
football system that had won the World Cup for
Brazil in 1994 and 2002. I think
that due to players like Bebeto, Romario, Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho,
people forget that those two World Cup winning outfits were incredibly
organised and well prepared. The flair players were the icing on the cake.
I think the wheels really started to come off
around about the time of the 2005 Confederations Cup, when
Brazil swept
Argentina aside in the Final,
winning 4-1. It gave them a sense of invincibility and a belief that they would
stroll through the World Cup a year later. They seemed totally dismissive of
the fact that
Brazil only
just scraped through the Group stage of that tournament following defeat to
Mexico and a draw with
Japan . For some reason, it seemed
at that time that the management team of
Brazil wanted to show that they
could win things by playing attacking and attractive football. The defensive
discipline and all around organisation of
Brazil teams that had been in place
since 1994 were simply tossed out of the window. They’ve never really looked
the part since then.
My only quibble with Edgar’s article is that he
says “The current players will not have it so bad as times have changed.
Maybe14 or 16 of them will be in
Russia in four years time. They
will get another chance”. I know it sounds incredibly harsh, but the only
players in the current squad I would be happy to still be around in four years
time are Thiago Silva and Neymar.
No quotes or headlines today. However, I was
interested to observe that Yahoo are running a feature about the Most
Embarrassing Losses in Sport as a result of
Brazil’s humiliation.
Date: Friday July 11th
2014
Current Brazil manager:
Luis Felipe Scolari
FIFA Ranking: 3
Likely Brazil line-up in 2018: Absolutely
no idea.
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