Olympics exposed flaw at the heart of Brazilian football | Jonathan Wilson

[Jonathan Wilson]

The problem for the Seleção ahead of the 2014 World Cup is to reconcile their nucleus of players to one unifying philosophy
Promising players, low-level doubts, patchy wins marked by moments of excellence, swelling hope, and then a crash against the first decent side they came up against. Brazil's Olympics ended in disappointment and, as the frustration of their defeat to Mexico in the final clears, so the post-mortem begins. Brazil were desperate to win Olympic gold for the first time but, with the Confederations Cup representing their only competitive football between now and the start of their World Cup they are hosting in 2014, it was also about preparation.
The evidence is contradictory. On the one hand, Brazil are clearly blessed with a highly gifted generation. If home advantage proves a spur rather than an intolerable pressure, that may be enough to carry them to a sixth world title. But the Olympics also exposed the flaw at the heart of Brazilian football, the tension that threatens constantly to bring them down.
As Tim Vickery explains in Issue Six of The Blizzard (out September), Brazilian football changed in the 70s. Part of the justification for the military coup in 1964 was the appointment of "technocrats" to run the economy and counter rampant inflation. The desire for bureaucratic experts seeped into other areas, including football. There was a desire to measure and to control, a movement that received a boost after the 1974 World Cup when Holland exposed the flaws of the South American style by thrashing Argentina and Uruguay and then beating Brazil with a highly systematised approach. From that moment, the men with the clipboards took over.
There was a reversion to the old, individualistic style under Telê Santana at the 1982 World Cup – and to an extent in 1986 – but thereafter the technocrats have held the upper hand. It's won two World Cups and led Brazil to another final, while radically improving their record in the Copa América: until 1997 (in part, it's true, because they hadn't taken the tournament particularly seriously) Brazil had never won the Copa América on foreign soil; they went on to win four of the next five.
Vickery argues that, contrary to stereotype, Brazil cares more than most places about winning. The defeat to Uruguay in the final game of the 1950 World Cup is still seen as a national catastrophe. Attendance figures fluctuate wildly according to the form of club sides. Success, though, hasn't brought Brazil much love; there's still a harking back to the verve that brought three World Cups between 1958 and 1970. Dunga, having won a Copa América and a Confederations Cup, was bundled out of the manager's job for one bad half in the World Cup, largely because his approach was seen as somehow inimical to Brazilian football's self-image.
"Today football is made by technocrats, but also by commerce and marketing," said Emerson Leão, who saw the change of emphasis as Brazil's goalkeeper at the 1974 and 1978 World Cups. "It's not about romance. What is a technocrat? Somebody who learned from a teacher in college or from a computer and not from the field. Now I'm going to tell you the Brazilian disaster: in the junior section of many professional teams the coaches are 100% technocrats. The president of the team believes in those people, because they come and present a wonderful training plan. Maybe they don't present things harshly as I would. These are the technocrats who appeal to the marketing types. But you have to know how to handle the players; to use psychology."
A generation has grown up watching Nike adverts showing carefree men with questionable hair-cuts freestyling through airports, cityscapes and prison ships and wondering how that equates to Dunga and César Sampaio, or Edmilson and Gilberto Silva, or Zé Roberto and Gilberto Silva, or Felipe Melo and Gilberto Silva, sitting doggedly in front of the back four. Nike's advertising hasn't created the contradiction that lies at the heart of Brazilian football culture, but it has highlighted it, perhaps even accentuated it.
Neymar, poor, overhyped, brilliant Neymar, is compelled to do tricks. It's not enough that his team wins; he must also perform individual miracles and live up to the advertisers' ideal. It is his misfortune to live in the age of an Argentinian genius: he must also confirm to Brazilians with every breath that he is as good, or at least may soon become as good, as Lionel Messi. Pelé's pursuit of the line that they are equals not merely confirms his debased status as a pundit, but is actually counter-productive, heaping pressure on Neymar and deflecting attention from far more significant issues.
The twin pressures on the Brazilian game have resulted in a style of football that recalls Arrigo Sacchi's description of Real Madrid in the galacticos era: it is full of specialists. There are those who dribble and run and shoot, and there are those who sit back and fill the spaces to allow them to do so. It's simplistic and effective against weaker opposition, but vulnerable to more streetwise opponents: even before Mexico beat them, Brazil had stuttered against Egypt and Honduras, before being extraordinarily fortunate against South Korea, who should have had two penalties in the semi-final. It also explains why so many of Brazil's holding midfielders are tacklers and distributors like Lucas or shuttlers like Ramires, and so few of them deep-lying creators in the way Falcão or Gerson once were.
As football elsewhere becomes increasingly about universality, about players being able to perform a multiplicity of roles, it also feels like an old-fashioned style. Old and new came together a year ago today in Pereira, Colombia, in the quarter-final of the Under-20 World Cup. Spain, with their systematised approach, held the ball, passed and passed, worked players into positions and twice scored from crosses from overlapping full-backs. Brazil, thanks largely to the individual excellence of Oscar, Willian, Henrique and Duda, also scored twice, then won on penalties. The quality of their forwards was not in doubt, but it felt like a smash-and-grab. Brazil went on to win the tournament but Spain had been the best side.
High-class individuals are not enough, as Brazil found at the Copa América last year. Neymar and Ganso were both given their head there and both found it hard to deal with the sort of tough, tight defending they simply they don't experience in Brazil. Brazil failed to beat Paraguay twice and Venezuela before going out in the quarter-final. It wasn't so much that defenders went in hard, but that the willingness of opposing defences to press and close down space in a way that was unfamiliar to them, while referees were far less generous in awarding free-kicks for minimal contact. The frustration the Brazilian coaching staff showed to Mark Clattenburg and his officials in Saturday's Olympic final was another manifestation of that, as Brazil ended up, again and again, dribbling down blind alleys as they were denied to time to measure passes.
The far bigger problem was Mano Menezes's baffling decision to start, as he had in the semi-final against South Korea, with Alex Sandro rather than Hulk. Perhaps it was an attempt to bridge the gap between the back and front of midfield, perhaps it was born of a fear of Neymar's reluctance to track the opposing right-back (Oh Jae-suk in the case of South Korea; Israel Jiménez in the case of Mexico), but it left Brazil hopelessly unbalanced, with Romulo and Oscar forced to drift right to try to fill the space in front of Rafael. As Rupert Fryer pointed out, it was the lack of anybody ahead of him on that right flank that cost Brazil the first goal, as the Manchester United full-back was forced to turn inside and then underhit his pass to Sandro.
In terms of personnel, Brazil look reasonably well placed in their preparations for 2014. A front four of Neymar, Oscar, Hulk and Leandro Damião offers a blend of pace, power and individual skill, knitted together by the vision of Oscar. Lucas and Ramires, while neither is a great long-range passer, will protect the back four. Marcelo on the left and Dani Alves or Maicon on the right are as good an attacking full-back pairing as exists at the moment. Thiago Silva needs a partner at centre-back (Juan? Dede? David Luiz?) and there are serious problems in goal, where Júlio César is in decline and there are no obvious candidates to replace him.
Most sides, though, would be delighted to have such a nucleus of players already in place. Brazil's problem is to reconcile them to one unifying philosophy.

• Brazil
• Olympic Games 2012

Jonathan Wilson

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