Since Tuesday (3), I have consumed a large amount of content about Filipe Luís’s dismissal at Flamengo. As absurd as it was, I browsed through different niches looking for anyone who could argue in favor of the decision taken by Flamengo’s board. From journalists to influencers, to fans of other clubs, I didn’t find anyone who could justify interrupting work for a month of bad football.
I’ll be brief on the facts to go into something more comprehensive: Filipe Luís didn’t have ten games of credit after making Flamengo win the Campeonato Brasileiro and Libertadores da América in December, in addition to the good match against PSG in the World Cup final. The managers did not take into account the start of the season, with its physical and concentration fluctuations, in addition to the impossibility of counting on Jorginho, one of the team’s pillars, in most games.
The decision, thinking about the macro, reflects a lot about what Brazilian football is and why our coaches are so incomplete and practically do not work outside the country. The message that Flamengo sends is that there is no time for adaptations, course corrections or even to test a coach’s skills to overcome a crisis. You have to bring your daily bread, the three points, whatever it may be.
It’s only worth winning, and this has a negative effect on the quality of the game. Without time or patience to develop anything on the field, the most natural thing is to put together primitive teams, which defend with everything they can and attack with whatever they can. We have the lowest goal average compared to the main European leagues. The highest average number of fouls committed and the shortest time the ball was in play.
You must know the pattern of a bad match: teams that kick forward, attackers who try to survive on solitary excursions, looking for a free kick close to the area to turn into a cross. Games that look more like tennis matches, with meaningless balls going from one side to the other. And after a team, almost at random, scores a goal, closes itself down and uses the tactic of making the game ugly, committing little fouls to stop the opponent, the goalkeeper falls, feels visceral pain in the 23rd minute of the first half of a game in the ninth round of the Brasileirão or the fifth round of a state championship. End of game, 1-0, job kept for another week.
Thus, Brazil formed a generation of technicians that already emerged behind. Obviously someone will be champion, because they have to be, and it will seem like this “style” works. Therefore, the arrival of foreign technicians changed the scenario in the country. Technicians who do not think about daily bread, but about planting a methodology to obtain good results. And, if they are fired, they return to their countries and continue their lives. The Brazilian coach cannot afford to do badly, because he has nowhere to go back. The system forces the Brazilian coach to be immediate and primitive in his game ideas.
Filipe Luís seems to be the best news to come from the bench in a long time. When was the last time Brazil had a promising coach? We are a reference in exporting players, but why isn’t the football elite interested in Brazilian coaches and our way of playing?
Brazilian football could be much better, better played and with more meaning. To achieve this, the first step is for the work to have a beginning, middle and end. Attitudes like Flamengo’s are a disservice to everyone.
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