Indeed, Arthur should have been in Russia but Tite decided otherwise....BIG F*CKING MISTAKE. This, and other mistakes made by Tite, are what one of my old professors at law school used to call "Intellectual Mistakes". Against Belgium, with Casemiro suspended, Arthur would have been a great help.
I don’t think Arthur would of done good against Belgium as the lone DM in place of Fernandinho. I would of taken Arthur to Russia instead of Fred or Renato Augusto though as neither player was fit. The only thing I blame Tite for is not making the tough decisions, he should have made. Gabriel Jesus should have been bench when it clearly wasn’t working. Paulinho wasn’t much used as well. Renato Augusto should of been cut.
Anybody would have been better than Fernandinho against Belgium. Boring game, Neymar MOM again. Interesting how Neymar is scoring less, but assisting nearly every single goal. He seems to look for the pass now instead of trying to score. We need to play European teams.
A comment on a Brazilian sports website caught my attention yesterday. "Every match Brazil just 'has' to field the same line-up already known by all by now. Every match, there's this crazy necessity to win - a necessity imposed both by the team itself and by the press to start the bombastic boasting, 'Brazil is not unbeaten for x number of matches straight.... then we get to Copa América next year, and someone on the ideal squad gets injured or goes into a funk and Brazil then enters a desperate scenario because no other player was tested as an alternative." I did not like reading this, but it does make sense. And sadly, this argument can be applied to Dunga 2010 and Tite 2018. Both were first-place finishers in CONMEBOL and quoted as favorites to win the World Cup. But all it took was a few unfortunate events (Elano got injured, Casemiro was suspended; they missed Holland & Belgium, respectively), and Brazil lost. Perhaps not by coincidence, by a miserable 2-1. We are all always second-guessing and criticizing, and Tite is only human. I hope Tite is willing to be more flexible. He is an intelligent, experienced, and highly successful manager. But if Brazil gave Telê Santana a second chance after 1982, we should give Tite one as well. And I'm not suggesting Tite is the equivalent of Telê; I'm just saying that even Telê Santana - arguably the most revered and universally loved Brazil NT manager of the past 40 years - failed to win a World Cup with a team that had even more acclaim and approval than Brazil 2010 or Brazil 2018 had. And no one disagrees that Telê Santana is a hall-of-fame manager in the annals of the history of Brazilian soccer.