Bad matches also happen to the best teams in Europe and the world. Arsenal, leader of the English Championship and Champions League, and Chelsea, world champion, played a very weak game, without creativity, with little exchange of passes and excessive long balls from defense to attack. It felt like a lot of games in Brazil, like the draw between Santos and São Paulo.
I repeat, because of intense pressure marking, increasingly stronger around the world, to quickly recover the ball, the number of shots and long throws by the defense has increased, due to the fear of trying to exchange passes and losing the ball in the middle. If this grows, there will be a setback. Football would be uglier and of less quality. Sometimes long balls are necessary, but they cannot be so frequent.
Excellent games also happen in Brazil frequently, like the draw between Bahia and Fluminense. It was a very pleasant match, with a lot of inventiveness, exchange of passes, efficiency and many chances to score. Fluminense’s goal, scored once again by John Kennedy, was beautiful due to its collective construction and individual talent. In both teams, the midfield is the soul and the brain. Midfielders score, build and advance. Everton Ribeiro continues in great form.
Brazilian football should put an end to the cliché that the midfield is divided between the first midfielder, shirt number 5, marker, the second midfielder, shirt number 8, a little more of a builder, and the attacking midfielder, shirt number 10, responsible for thinking, setting up plays and even entering the area to score goals.
In the 1-1 draw between Flamengo and Inter, Paquetá had a discreet performance, playing for the first time since the start of the match. Paquetá, unlike modern players, shines more in small spaces, with inventive and surprising touches of the ball.
In Cruzeiro’s 2-1 defeat to Coritiba, at Mineirão, it became more evident that Tite has another ideology, that of scoring by sector and closing spaces, instead of pressing with intensity to try to quickly recover the ball, as was the case with Leonardo Jardim.
Carlo Ancelotti is attentive to all games in Brazil and abroad. In the next squad for the two friendlies against France and Croatia, the only player who has not yet been called up and who has a good chance is young Endrick, who shines for Lyon, in France. At Real Madrid, having been a reserve for three exceptional players (Mbappé, Vinicius Junior and Rodrygo), Endrick delayed his development, as he barely played.
The old platitudes that a player needs a long time to gel and need to perform well in various positions and roles are questionable. More important than time is the union of technical and physical characteristics that complement each other. In addition to talent, it is necessary to find the best position on the field, in your own way.
Superstars tend to think other people’s thoughts. They have unconscious knowledge that precedes logical reasoning. Neuroscientists call kinesthetic intelligence the ability to see, in fractions of a second, everything that happens around, in addition to calculating the movements and speed of the ball, teammates and opponents. He knows without knowing that he knows.
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