In Brazil, when a corporation sees its market reserve threatened, we receive the ultimatum that it is necessary to defend this corporation in the name of national sovereignty. The film is now repeated with the football coaches.
In a ceremony at the CBF, Oswaldo de Oliveira and Émerson Leão put on a show of embarrassing resentment: the Brazilian coaches were being “disrespected”.
The bitterness comes from the fact that Portuguese players like Jorge Jesus and Abel Ferreira and Argentines like Juan Pablo Vojvoda and Jorge Sampaoli made clear the tactical gap in which Brazilian coaches lived.
The abyss is so gigantic that, when explaining it to those trained within it, it is necessary to start with phrases like “in recent decades, it has become important for the coach to study”.
In the selection, possible national alternatives were tried. From 2016 to 2022, Tite enjoyed unprecedented support in Canarinho’s history. And there was evolution after the disaster of the Parreira 2, Felipão 2 and Dunga 2 eras. The team had defensive consistency and dominated the South American Qualifiers.
After the 2018 World Cup, there was a consensus that Tite deserved a chance with a full cycle. But in 2022, the 2018 film was repeated: elimination in the quarterfinals leading to the tactical defeat of a medium European power.
The tactical knot is the situation of football superiority caused by the fact that the preparation of one team included the awareness of how the other would play, without the latter having a comparable response to the arrangement produced by the opponent’s awareness.
Both the Croatian overpopulation of the midfield in 2022 and the Belgian choice of Lukaku and Hazard on the wings and De Bruyne as a false nine, in 2018, were predictable. But, when Tite realized, it was already too late. The tactical knot does not need to last 90 minutes.
From then on, it was downhill. Pachequismo elevated an honorable but visibly green coach, Fernando Diniz, to the status of guru. Unspeakable nonsense was written about Dinizist “relationalism” as “overcoming guardiolism” and supposed “return to the roots of Brazilian football”. Diniz left the team with the worst performance rate in history.
In 2024, Marcelo Bielsa eliminated us from the Copa América leading a nation smaller than the east zone of São Paulo, while our coach, Dorival Júnior, couldn’t get into a mess of his own players.
With Dorival, we received a beating from Argentina that we hadn’t received since the pre-Pelé era, with the extra humiliation of seeing full-back Tagliafico explaining on video the most elementary production of triangles of numerical superiority.
Faced with this devastated earth, Carlo Ancelotti’s choice was the best possible, not only because of his unquestionable CV, but also because he is a polyglot who is careful to move between so much resentment and bitterness.
There will be no shortage of coaches rooting against the team, with their speeches ready. Even if Brazil is overwhelming during the tournament and only loses the final due to individual errors, all the fury will be directed against Don Carletto. They will repeat that “Brazil won five World Cups with Brazilian coaches”, as if it had lost the other 17 with foreign coaches.
Whatever the result, with Don Carletto the minimum decency, elegance and dignity are guaranteed.
