There is no such thing as a friendly for the Brazil national team, or at least not for its hoards of fans around the world. Brazil don’t just play friendlies, they take part in the Brazil Global Tour: it’s got a sponsor and everything. No other team in the world has such fanfare attached to non-competitive games, but when these types of games were all they had to play during the build-up to their 2014 […]
Since 2008 the highest individual accolade a soccer player can receive, the Ballon d’Or, has been won either by Lionel Messi or Cristiano Ronaldo. Now there is a new contender challenging for the title and according to Brazilian legend Cafu, Neymar is set to become the best player in the world. Cafu spoke with The Silver Times about Neymar’s talent in an interview stating, “this is a genuine phenomenon, this is one of the best […]
7-1 will never be erased. No one in Brazil will tell you differently. Winning the Olympics, which many rightfully point out is simply a glorified youth tournament, pales in comparison to the national embarrassment that was Germany’s 7-1 win against Brasil in the 2014 World Cup. But just as the stain that is the 7-1 will never be cleaned, so too, the shine that is the Olympic Gold Medal will never fade. Embed from Getty […]
Tite will assume the reigns of the Seleção for the resumption of the World Cup qualifiers in August. He is a significant upgrade on Dunga, as a glance at the track record of the two coaches suggests. Tite is comfortably the best Brazilian coach around, albeit the bar has been exponentially lowered over the years by a poisonous coaching culture. Impatient club owners sack managers with impunity, then compound this vicious cycle by hiring from […]
This summer, Brazil’s national team will participate in two international competitions deemed to be of utmost importance. First, in June, the full national team will participate in the Copa América Centenario in the United States. Then, in August, Brazil’s u-23 national team, plus three selected overage players, will participate in the Olympic Games football tournament which will be held throughout Brazil in venues that also hosted matches during the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The biggest […]
Brazil’s impressive record in friendly matches continued as they defeated a poor USA side by four goals to one in Foxborough, Massachusetts. The last friendly Brazil failed to win was way back in August 2013, when a Daniel Alves own goal gave Switzerland a win in Basel. The United States, or the USMNT as they’re more commonly known, were coming into this game off the back of a 2-1 win against Peru, but their hopes […]
There’s a video on YouTube which shows Liverpool and Brazil midfielder Philipe Coutinho getting hold of the ball, slaloming past three defenders and then slamming it past the goalkeeper. It is a wonderful expression of skill and technical mastery; the fluidity of execution breathtaking. In this video, shown below, Coutinho isn’t in a Liverpool shirt. Nor is he playing for any of his previous European clubs; Inter and Espanyol. Indeed, he isn’t even on […]
A few months ago a website wanted to pay me good money to go to Santos and write a profile piece on the team’s young striker Gabriel ‘Gabigol’ Barbosa. And I ended up talking myself out of a lucrative commission. The idea started to lose appeal when he did little of note at the start of the year in the South American Under-20 Championships. And it died a death when he was not even selected […]
For Dunga and Brazil, the qualifiers for the 2018 World Cup get underway in October, so the coach does not have much time to pick over the rubble of a pretty disastrous Copa América campaign. The Copa is usually considered a neat precursor to the qualifiers. It marks the beginning of a new cycle in the international calendar, and as such, many coaches use it as a laboratory to perfect the formula for the seasons […]
The Copa América is not as illustrious in South America as its continental cousin the European Championships. It falls in the proceeding summer after the World Cup and precedes the Olympic Games, which is seen as a superior prize. Any tournament in which the Americas pit their wits against European counterparts stirs the loins to a much greater degree than continental competition. The fact that there is no qualifying process for Copa América means that […]