2 x 0 - FT I will excuse the score line given the rain. We should have conceded 1 goal though. Venezuela had chances but I won't put too much weight into it. Normal to play a little more relaxed vs a weaker opponent after being up early. With this win we take over 1st place from Uruguay and I'd like to thank the coach who made this possible .... the great Wanderlei Luxemburgo !
A good night for us. We defeat Venezuela without Neymar, keep the clean sheet, and are now 4 for 4 with Tite, with 12 goals scored and 1 allowed. Neymar will be back for the Argentina & Peru matches - both will be hungry for points as Paraguay and Chile defeated them tonight. I look forward to the match in Belo Horizonte. We drew them 0-0 on our last home WCQ against Argentina, in 2008, but beat them 3-1 in 2004 and tonight showed that they are in a difficult spot. Anything can happen, but if I was confident of a win in Buenos Aires (we drew), a victory is absolutely within grasp.
Well it's I guess we can say that barring injuries that T. Silva and Oscar will be getting called for the Argentina and Peru games!! You can't call up 2 players that been in the international wilderness(whether by choice or force) and don't play them and then drop them again!!
Marquinhos and Miranda have been balling. You can't ruin that on the account that Silva is better than both.
There's no doubt that Miranda and Marquinhos have been playing very well all I was saying that after all the ruckus involving T. Silva, I was just saying that he shouldn't be dropped again cause he didn't get a chance to get on the field in 2 games after his yearlong exile that's all!!
Oscar is still pretty meh. Don't really see him lighting it up at Chelsea to be even in the running to start for the Selecao over guys like Coutinho. Thiago Silva is a shocker though. Even Tite has said( before he was manager) that he'd have him as 1st name on the team sheet. Maybe he doesn't want to mess up a decent pair in Miranda and Marquinhos. Plus Miranda plays in TS's preferred spot and as much as I think we need to avoid having 2 many 30+ yr old guys on the squad, Miranda hasn't done anything to avoid being dropped.
It's been a LONG while since I last watched Oscar playing, but if his work rate is enough, I can see him doing the Paulinho role very well. Clean tackler, good shooting and passing. Dunno if he can handle runnign from box to box during the 90 minutes tho.
I think Paulinho is better than Oscar in almost all the areas listed above as long as he does not have to shoot at the goal.
Paulinho is not why we suffered in the last World Cup, Fernandinho , Tiago silva, David Luis , Marcelo Bernard were the main reasons Paulinho was good at playing defined role of holding midfielder who occasionally goes forward, anything beyond that is beyond his skill set Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
In my opinion the main reason we lost in 2014 was that we had no plan to play without Neymar. The team that won the Confed Cup was actually pretty good! Also players like T Silva and othere could not handle the pressure of intense WC games... they just ended up crying....
I think the pressure played the biggest part. I don't think the players can play their natural game under massive amounts of pressure. I look at Gabriel Jesus performances now and when he was at the Olympics and it's almost night and day.
Gj did much better as the tournament progress. I don't think it was pressure so much as Tiago silva and Neymar missing a key match Fernandinho laid an egg on that day , but the guy can never make a clean tackle even today, so don't know he was in the team then and why he is back Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk