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AUTOPSY OF A LIE
Costa Rica Squad in Brazils World Cup 2014
By Jorge Vasconcelos. Twitter: @Jorgeefv
July 09, 2014
There is a Chinese saying which states that the unexpected takes
a long time to be prepared.
According to the followers of this Chinese saying severe
diseases on a given individual or global
climate catastrophes take a long preparation time before they
show up in their full materialized
form. During this preparation time nature invariably sends
several signs of the ongoing
transformation. Yesterday for Brazil was the Judgement Day. We
are still all in shock (and some
still in denial, like Luiz Felipe Scolari and Carlos Alberto
Parreira) about that scoreboard
displaying Brazil 1 x Germany 7 for the semi-finals of the World
Cup 2014. The atmosphere in
the whole country was (and still is) the closest I could imagine
of an apocalypse announcement.
This was the 1st time in the history of more than 100 years of
Brazilian football that such a
scoreboard was produced against Brazil. The most successful
country in the history of football
having conquered undeniable 5 World Cup titles, and having
produced the likes of Pel,
Garrincha, Rivellino, Jairzinho, Tosto, Carlos Alberto, Zico,
Careca, Rivaldo, Ronaldo,
Ronaldinho, Neymar and many others, Brazil was destroyed
yesterday by a powerful and
organized Germany. But although Luiz Felipe Scolari and Carlos
Alberto Parreira in their
aftermath interview were saying that this was an isolated event
and that this fortuitous bloop
will never happen again in the times to come I go back to the
Chinese saying and it is crystal
clear that this bloop of the Brazilian national team was showing
its signs way before. I will not
delve into the minutiae of the pre-World Cup matches but some
aspects raised eyebrows
amongst supporters and the local press here in Brazil since the
start of the World Cup. Aspects
like the lack of emotional control of the players displayed in
full when the tears rolled
abundantly down their faces when the national anthem was played
and later on sang without
music by the crowd in the stadium. Aspects like how updated (or
not) were Luiz Felipe Scolari(or Felipo, as we call him) and Carlos
Alberto Parreira in this World Cup when compared to
their modern peers from other teams or even compared to
themselves back in 2002 (for Scolari)
and 1994 (for Parreira). Aspects like how prepared was a
Brazilian national team so dependent
of the lone-star Neymar, a team in which the most prominent
supporting cast members were
the 2 defenders, Thiago Silva and David Luiz, a team that had
suffered and cried tears of blood
to win from Chile and later on showed very distinctive flaws in
the confrontation with Colombia
(the ever-present lack of repertoire, the persistent direct
connection from the defenders to the
forwards, the non-existing midfield sector and null
center-forward in the figure of Fred). After
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an obliterating loss to Germany by seven goals to one (in a game
that Germany only stopped
scoring because they took their feet out of the gas) it was
laughable to hear the post-mortem
declarations of Felipo and Parreira to the press claiming that
the game against Germany was an
unusual happening and that the job was so far well done. This
unusual happening could be
very well predicted when we consider that Brazil stopped
evolving after the conquer of the
World Cup of 2002 in which Brazil counted on a team with
Ronaldo, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho
Gacho, Cafu, Roberto Carlos, Gilberto Silva, Klberson, Lcio and
Marcos (all outstanding
players) plus the very good Edmlson and Roque Jnior all in
outstanding form. That team
could more than compensate from within the pitch the lack of
tactics of Felipao, the great
motivator. Motivation and improvisation, those were always the
core of Felipos ethos. But
motivation and improvisation can only get you so far. In fact
Brazil was never a nation known
for their top-performance in planning (to prove that we can have
a look on how organized was
the preparation for this World Cup, with Stadia construction
costs going beyond the roof of the
planned budgets and the deliveries happening way behind the
planned schedule). Brazil is a
country that takes pride in the improvisational capacity of the
countrys professionals in every
area. The famous Brazilian jeitinho (i.e. Brazilian way to solve
problems in the last minute or
second through improvisations) is the trademark of everything
that the country produces. This
extends to Brazilian football in which the upper-side is the
production (in the past) of
outstanding football talents that could more than compensate the
total lack of planning outside
of the pitch and the lack of tactics within the pitch through
their amazing dribbles and passesand fantastic goalscoring
capacities. With the scarcity of the production of outstanding
players,
due to the ill-intentioned policies and procedures of Brazilian
Clubs that aim to produce players
in industrial scale to be sold as soon as possible to Europe,
players in which are instilled some
sort of tactical discipline since their young age (7+ years old)
about how to play the game in
order to make them more sellable, Brazil finds itself in a
crossroads regarding football: Brazil is
not an example of tactical discipline (as it never was) and in
the attempt to look like it is, Brazil
is castrating in the grassroots the improvisational talents that
for so long made the country so
successful despite of the lack of organization. Nowadays Brazil
is a hybrid creature without
identity: it is not tactically disciplined enough or tactically
revolutionary enough and it is not
anymore the land of the improvisational football artists. Brazil
as a football nation needs to
reboot itself and make peace with what made the country so
successful: pure talent. Only after
the lost link with talent is retrieved, Brazil will be able to
customize tactics that respect and
stimulate this talent and only after this, nature will have time
to make these fortuitous bloops
to happen in Brazils favor once again.
