There aren’t enough great players and colors.
The Brazilians have won only two Ballon d’Ors in the new century
The Brazilian was not the best player in the world for a long time, capable of transforming a team into a championship machine, as Ronaldo and Messi managed to do in their national teams. Neymar is weaker. But even if we remember the successes of the Brazilians Ronaldo and Kaka, who received the Ballon d’Or, two victories in almost a quarter of a century are not enough. The Seleção could not count on the success of the best footballer on the planet. Endrick and Vinicius are also far from this status. The Real Madrid winger was ranked sixth in this year’s poll.
Haaland, Mbappe and Bellingham are unlikely to agree that Vinicius is better than them. The junior was eighth in the Ballon d’Or rankings a year ago and missed the top thirty-two seasons ago. The young Real Madrid winger is a top-notch footballer. But the Brazilian national team has only three such people without Neymar. Furthermore, Alisson and Ederson are goalkeepers and cannot enter the field at the same time. The old Casemiro slows down, his long career in the Brazilian national team is most likely over.
Opornik Manchester United he is unlikely to make it to the World Cup in three years at his peak. Marquinhos hasn’t left France for ten years and hasn’t improved in the last five years. Brazil no longer has Roberto Carlos and Cafu on the wings, and there is no new Ronaldo in attack. The Seleção used to be first in the world in terms of talent, but now the French, Spanish and English are well ahead of them in terms of personnel. The Argentines can also compete, as they have shown in the latest direct comparisons.
After Argentina’s victory in the Copa America final, Messi’s team recently ended the Selecao’s 69-year run of unbeaten home runs in qualifying matches. world Cup. And when it is not possible to count on a key player like Lionel, you have to bet on a great coach. But mentors are worse than players. This is a big problem, so they looked for a foreign specialist.
The Seleção has not been coached by great masters for a quarter of a century
Zagallo can be defined as a great mentor, but only as coach of the Brazilian national team. At club level, Mario did not achieve incredible success. But with the Brazilian national team as coach and coordinator, he won two World Cups and lost once again to Zidane and France in the final in Paris. The great ant still lives, he is now 92 years old and in good health.
Vicente Feola and Tele Santana were also exceptional specialists. Saldaña, who moved from journalism to football and formed Zagallo’s one-off team for the 1970 championship, was also an exceptional mentor despite his brief coaching career. And then there are the frankly controversial characters. Even Alberto Pereira and Dunga are not strong enough as coaches.
And Tite or Scolari are not all-time legends, even if the latter won the World Cup. But he needs a coach, he remembers the semi-final between Brazil and Germany. Only weak-willed teams lose this badly at home. Ancelotti suits him, but the Italian looks at the state of the Brazilian national team and remembers that promising doesn’t mean getting married. Verbal agreements don’t matter if Carlo changes his mind.
The new Brazil team is decidedly devoid of legend
Once upon a time, technical alcoholics and sex maniacs united and won the world championship for a great country. And four years later they repeated the success. Then, after an eight-year hiatus, they took their third cup. Then there were years of suffering and bad luck, but in the nineties there were those who achieved new success, followed by a lost final and another victory.
But now Brazil no longer has the previous status. Neymar’s tears and simulations are not the celebration of the birth of his son Bebeto, not Taffaril’s look, which scared not only Roberto Baggio, and not Ronaldo’s feints world Cup-2002. But Brazil was a magical team, shrouded in legends. When they lost their first World Cup final to Uruguay, they busted the goalkeeper.
And the poor guy wasn’t wrong. Subsequently, Moacir Barbosa received a wooden goal from the Maracanã stadium. The former goalkeeper burned them while he was cooking the skewers. Brazil was a collection of stories, like Ronaldo’s mysterious attack on the eve of the final world Cup-98 against France. Stories like these have transformed them into living superheroes. There were legends everywhere.
For example, at Botafogo I monitored the form of Nenem Prancha. They made a “football philosopher” out of a man. The boy with enormous hands and large feet was so loved by the fans that Saldanha himself, a journalist and then coach, attributed his aphorisms to him. They literally created a character that didn’t exist because Nenem wasn’t the Brazilian Oscar Wilde.
Prancha said nothing in the style of “football is very simple, whoever has the ball attacks, whoever doesn’t have the ball defends”. I also wasn’t joking about the fact that in football “the important thing is the main thing, the rest is secondary”. But people created their own Nenem because they needed a person with funny quotes about their favorite football. 47 years after Prancha’s death, Brazilians have forgotten how to create legends.
They didn’t even make Neymar a new king. Ronaldinho’s talent is sorely missed. Brazilians are often flat, like Anthony’s Manchester United. At the same time, Rodrigo and company are very bold millionaires. The Real Madrid winger had the courage to insult Messi. Rodrigo called the winner a coward world Cup on penalties, although the winger himself lost lacklusterly to Croatia on penalties.
With or without Neymar, this team has no core. Just rude if nothing works. The skill level has dropped. Rivaldo, Ronaldo and Ronaldinho were of a higher class than Rodrigo, Endrick and Vinicius. And Neymar is unlikely to find the strength to return and play well in the summer of 2026. Unfortunately the Selecao is going through a bad moment, and it’s not just a series of defeats.
