Brazil has endured a lot of low decline over the past fifteen years so that it is difficult to remember them all.
Historically embarrassing defeat 7-1 for Germany in the World Cup? Certainly, but do not forget to reset the truck of Duja as a coach in the wake of this or the Copa America twins in 2015 and 2016. You will need a team of forensic experts to remove properly through all these rubble.
There is also a more modern option that may have passed you. In November 2023, led by the second temporary coach for this year, Brazil welcomed Argentina, Rio de Janeiro, in the World Cup qualifiers. They lost 1-0, which is a predictable result, which, however, the crisis of the crisis towards “existentialism”.
The third Brazil defeat was in the first six rehabilitation rounds. They left them in the sixth place in the South American Group, which consists of 10 teams. Venezuela was not an idea of a major football power, above it in the arrangement. This is how they were Ecuador and they started the campaign to deduct points.
The expansion of the World Cup and the place of additional automatic qualifiers for the Kunmipol region (now there are six, with identical matches between the nation in seventh place) has reduced the chances of failure in Brazil. Instead, they were joking with a disaster.
Sixteen months later, the situation is under control. The hard victory over Colombia last week, Brazil, raised to third. There is a temporary store of eight points between them and the seventh. We can say with some certainty that they will be in the 2026 World Cup. The drama has ended.
This, though, does not mean that everything is sunlight and roses. In fact, with Brazil’s willingness to face Argentina for the first time since the reflection in Rio de Janeiro, there is a constant feeling of uncomfortable about the direction of travel.
Vinicius Junior celebrates his late victory over Brazil over Colombia on Friday (Buda Mendes/Getty Images)
Brazil’s results have improved, but it would be generous to say that she was playing well. They were wonderful at the extreme in Copa America last summer, and the last matches followed the same template: there is little inspiration, most of them individual, but also long periods when Brazil is diluted and eclipse. They started well against Colombia, but they left all the momentum leaking, as they often do.
The late Vinicius Junior winner, a single scope of the range, condemns more beating and luck than any group plan. “I hope it will open something,” said Vinicius Junior after the match. He is not the only one.
Dorival Junior, who assumed the position of coach in January 2024, is a beloved character. He arrived with a reputation as a firefighter, a person who can avoid the imminent crisis. In this number, the task was accomplished. Mathematical, Brazil is safe. The question now is if he has tactical acumen to convert them into a suitable team.
The jury outside this one. He says he wants to play his stars – Rodrigo, Vinicius Junior, Ravenha – with freedom, but more structure is needed against organized defenses. His system can leave the Brazil midfielders exposed and is slow to respond to the transformations in the match style. “Sometimes it is difficult to communicate your message clearly.”
Another line of his press conference – “We have seen a great improvement in every game” – the anger of the Brazilian press. “You need an enlarged cup to see any progress,” Jessica Seskon, from GloboesPorte. “We need something different, and a mash of originality,” Tustau, the former Brazilian striker.
Interference with Argentina is painful at every level. Few ever admit such heresy, but all reasonable Brazilian football fans will feel a sharp transition from jealousy when they look across their southern borders.
It is clear that there are prizes. Argentina won the World Cup in 2022, something that Brazil has not been able to more than two decades ago and does not seem any time soon. The last two editions of Copa America have gone the path of Argentina as well. Brazil won that competition in 2019, but it seems long now. Over the past six years, this has been incredibly competing.
Part of the magic of this period of Argentine hegemony is that it was very unexpected. In 2010, Argentina spent a decline between crises, yet a ticket ticket was found in the bottom of the sofa. Lionel Scaloni did not solve every problem behind the scenes – as he is close to moving away from the job last year after he claimed that the hierarchy of the federation – but he liquidated the noise and innocence to the transformational impact. Brazil will kill small slices of the same thing.
Dorieval Junior took over as the main coach of Brazil in January 2024 (Evaristo SA/AFP via Getty Images)
On the field, Argentina is all that Brazil is not: settlement, dug, coherent. It is clear that the presence of a global historical football player is always likely to swing in your favor, but Argentina knows how to get when Lionel Messi is absent, as he will be in Buenos Aires on Tuesday. This is the seventh year of Skaloni responsible and you can say. Brazil players, as Marcinus said this week, “They still get to know each other,”; War dogs in Argentina know each other from the inside out.
Perhaps the contrast is the most stringent, though, it can be found in the stands and in the streets.
It is impossible to think about winning the World Cup in Argentina without remembering those amazing scenes of support and joy in the cities of the country: the seas flying in the squares in the city, tears, singing, and boys cling to the two phone poles, and they wander around themselves.
Success always generates attachment, but there is an additional thing here, with real communication. Argentina not only see these players. They feel harmonious with them, represent them, and turn into their many features. (And less positive, defensive of their faults.)
Things are different for Brazil. It is understood, there is nothing big to support Selecao in its current repetition. The most interesting is that there is no major national anger around the team and its decrease in its position. The dominant feelings are indifference and erosion.
This is not a new phenomenon. Brazilian critics have collected their hands about the lack of a relationship between the national team and the public for years, and perhaps even decades. The players are asked about it all the time. Each game is drawn as an opportunity to make people alongside them, to start falsifying a new unified front. It is impossible to follow him experimentally, but the continuation of the speech tells his own story.
Some factors are usually cited as causes of distress. One of them is that many of the national team players do not have real ties with the Brazilian fans, after they left the local scene before playing a lot – or any senior football. The other is that Brazil has spent years playing friendly matches all over the world, which gave priority to revenue on kinship.
After that, there are more accustomed degrees about the care of the players more than their bank accounts and the club’s teams more than they do for their country, a argument that completely undermines these players ’themselves crossing the Atlantic Ocean several times a year to overcome the more they won 3-0. (It will be unfair to make any analysis of the team’s superior relationship without referring to the merits of entitlement and patience located within the Brazilian fans base.)
It is not clear how you can solve any of this. It is not clear that you can. The best hope, as you say, is simply starting to win things – to start a virtuous cycle that blocks all cracks, as Argentina did when they appointed Scalloni in 2018.
While Brazil is heading to Buenos Aires, to another noisy stadium, to another exhibition for the team and the public, they will know that there is a road outside the antiseptic. However, lightning with a bottle like Argentina will not be easy.
(The highest pictures: Getty Emiez)