The question that opens the text is rhetorical, of course. There are no soccer players who believe that tactics are an exclusive feature of European football.
But the idea persists that Brazilian victories in World Cups can only be explained by the individual brilliance of their players, as if their success had been the result of isolated genius.
The 24 years of fasting gave way to clichés like the one we’ve all encountered in the stands or on the internet: “since we started copying European tatiques, we’ve never won again”.
Ironically, the closest correlation to reality is the opposite. Brazil stopped reaching World Cup finals after no longer being at the tactical forefront of its time, which it had been for decades.
Here, the lack of communication between two bibliographies is revealing. On the one hand, the histories of tactics written in English, German, Italian and Dutch do not mention Brazil, except as a home for the individual talent that tactics will have to overcome.
On the other hand, in the chronicle and oral history produced by Brazil about its football, there is practically no mention of tactics. She receives no credit for the victories, which are attributed to individual geniuses, as if they had operated loose, outside of a pattern.
The myth is old. Already in 1938, Gilberto Freyre explained the good role in the French Cup by “individual spontaneity […] rebellious to excesses of internal ordering; to excesses of uniformization, geometrization, standardization”.
The Brazilian football that defeated the Czechs and Poles in the 1938 World Cup is already completely permeated by Hungarian influence, but Freyre is unaware or omits the fact. It would complicate the simplistic opposition between Brazilian spontaneity and European geometrization.
The Hungarian Eugenio Marinetti (Jeno Medgyessy) had revolutionized the stories of Botafogo, Fluminense, Galo, Palmeiras and São Paulo, with training methods and tactical variations that were later decisive for the 1938 team. Romeu Pelliciari had been led by Marinetti at Palestra Itália, and was key for Brazil to transform the pyramid (2-3-5) into a scheme that populated the midfield with the retreat of the two internal. It is not known that Freyre was aware that another Hungarian, Dori Kürschner, was an advisor to coach Adhemar Pimenta.
In 1958 and 1962, tactical innovation was so important that it’s shocking that we don’t have a book on the subject. After decades of global domination by WM (3-2-2-3), Brazil invented the line of four defenders and zone marking. When broadcasting Brazil 3 x 1 England (1962), the BBC narrator, Kenneth Wolstenholme, was enchanted by what still seemed to him an innovation: “they mark spaces, not men.”
The line of four allows Brazil another tactical innovation, the emergence of the attacking full-back, who surpasses the winger. The Argentinean Marzolini and the Italian Facchetti are examples of how influential the art invented by the Brazilian Nílton Santos was.
The limitations of the 4-2-4 led to yet another innovation, the winger who retreats and closes the middle — an art inaugurated by Telê Santana, at Fluminense, and later consecrated by Zagallo’s performance in 1958 and 1962.
We didn’t lose World Cups because we started to worry about tactics. It’s the opposite. The fasting period coincides with the consolidation of a complacent, spontaneistic mentality, averse to studying, which has left Brazilian technicians behind even in relation to Portuguese ones.
The arrival of Carlo Ancelotti and the success of studious coaches like Filipe Luís are encouragements, and signs that the tide may be changing.
