I didn’t want to start my first column in Folha de S.Paulo with a cliché, but clichés are there because they make sense. So here goes: “Brazilians like to queue. And they like jumping in line even more.”
After ten years living in Spain, I saw how the Iberian bureaucracy leaves ours behind in no way. And, if you are a foreigner, you will get used to queues much more than in Brazil. Unless you’re Estêvão.
Because, in football, Estêvão was last in line. The new student who has just arrived and it is normal for him to wait his turn without making much noise. It turns out that in this sport the ball speaks and it does not respect queues, hierarchies or bureaucratic processes.
At Chelsea, he is one of four players to play in 16 of the 17 games of the season, the 11th most used in the squad. He’s not an absolute starter, but he’s increasingly so. He scored four goals in eight games from October to now.
In the national team, he took advantage of the absence of Rodrygo, in June, and also of Vini Jr, in September, to play. In the last two call-ups, Raphinha, injured, was not present. And Estêvão remained on the team. He has scored five goals since Carlo Ancelotti’s arrival. The last one to arrive only has three goals less than Vini Jr in the yellow shirt.
Ancelotti decided to bet on a game plan with a lot of mobility up front. We don’t have a great number 10 (we’ll talk about that in a moment) nor a super 9. The idea then is to play with several attackers changing positions and trying to create doubt and space in the opponent’s defense.
It worked very well against South Korea and Senegal. Against Japan, the idea and the pieces were different, and against Tunisia almost nothing worked. Except Estêvão. While Vini and Rodrygo take turns on the left and Matheus Cunha tries to open up space by moving non-stop inside, the youngest waits for his turn on the right wing. And the more difficult the game became against the Tunisians, the more the team looked for him. After Marquinhos and Caio Henrique, he was the player who intervened the most in the match (defenders normally touch the ball more than attackers, it’s normal).
The match ended with a penalty goal — breaking the line of penalty takers — and it could have been two, if Ancelotti hadn’t wanted to take pressure off the young man by choosing Paquetá (who later admitted he was anxious) to take the second penalty. Estêvão even hit the post on the last shot.
Ancelotti’s scheme with four attackers went well in games where Brazil had space and poorly in the first closed defense they encountered along the way. If the idea is to maintain and improve this tactical design, Estêvão needs to remain on the team. One of the main weapons to dismantle such closed schemes with five markers close to the area is the short dribble. And Estêvão has more of that than his competitors.
After almost ten paragraphs, let’s open this melon. What if Neymar is fine?
Then the best idea seems to me to be to change to a more leisurely attack, with the input of an organizer (I said we would get here). The less back and forth, attacks and counterattacks, with a player like Neymar —very talented, but slower and less combative—, the better.
Estêvão should also remain on the team if that is the idea, because he always presents himself for the game in this “positional game” — in which each person stays in their positions performing specific functions.
The selection may have left mixed feelings against Senegal and then Tunisia. The one who left no ambiguous feelings was Estêvão.
I’m against long queues and bureaucracy (Brazilian and Spanish), but I’m also against queue jumping. Except in football. The ball reduces bureaucracy. Let Estêvão pass.
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