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 1
st
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
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 passes
and 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.