That was not fun to watch. Poor game by us offensively, again. Trouble connecting passes and building any momentum again. That said, I expected more from Uruguay. They did press, but the amount of fouls surprised me considering how poorly we did against Colombia and against Uruguay in qualifiers. Good individual defensive performances by Militão and Marquinhos. I'm going to be curious to see how analysts break it down and whether we contained Uruguay thanks to the game plan or just individual work, or if they just failed to execute. Now on to penalties. Hope we get through just for more time for the time to work together.
Well, Alisson makes one save, but we were already down two. Uruguay wins 4x2 Horrible PK by Militão, saved, and Douglas Luiz hits the post. We're out early and I don't see a lot fo progress on offense. On defense... technically we're getting better results than under Diniz, but that isn't much.
The good: Brazil did not lose to Uruguay and Dorival is still unbeaten - although the pressure on him has now risen. I saw very slight evolution from the Colombia match, and Brazil didn't get scored on. Vini Jr. will likely - and hopefully - remember how his lack of self-control got himself excluded from a do-or-die match. As an article on UOL said, what we saw in this tournament is the bitter fruit we're being forced to taste thanks to CBF's ridiculous gamble on Carlo Ancelotti. The irony is that Endrick didn't have a bad game, although not a brilliant one, and that opens up questions as to what would have been, at least against Costa Rica for example, had Dorival deployed him as part of the starting IX. Dorival gets a B- for me since Brazil's first match with him (1-0 win vs. England). And again, Brazil is undefeated under him. But his work is now cut out for him once 2026 WCQ resumes. Colombia vs. Uruguay will be - or should be - an epic match to watch.
Brazil did that - more or less - 23 years ago. Thankfully for us, CBF resisted calls to fire Scolari and later on, Ronaldo came back healthy. The rest is history. Brazil right now reminds me of Brazil in mid-2001. It was also against Uruguay that Brazil, under fire and under great pressure, faced the home team in Montevideo. Off a PK, Brazil lost 1-0, but the team at least fought hard. Things are less dire now; with more berths, the odds of Brazil not reaching the World Cup are very low (they were higher in 2001). CBF leadership has made mistakes, but keeping Scolari aboard despite all the pressure to fire him after the debacle vs. Honduras was one thing CBF did right then. Dorival needs to stay. He was not my first option and I'm sure a lot of people, including in CBF, didn't want him either at first. But just throwing him out is only going to backfire.
I am all for giving a coach time but honestly the signs don’t look good from Dorival either. Our midfield play and overall play has been terrible in every game except one half versus Paraguay that’s not good enough.
On one hand more games are good to work things out , on the other Dorival had enough time to do better and I will not have to watch another shit performance . Things were not going to improve in a game.
Again, context and circumstances. No one is available now. Tite is the last manager whom CBF will think of hiring, and the man is happy at a Flamengo which has won far more Campeonato Brasileiro points than many pundits forecast given several key players are in the U.S. at the moment. Abel Ferreira (for the perhaps 20th time my favorite going back to late 2022) has signed an extension at Palmeiras, he is highly likely to lead his team to at least one title on 2024, and when questioned 1.5 years ago about succeeding Tite, Abel said Palmeiras was his "reality." I would not mind him one day, but it doesn't look probable. Who, then? Surely you don't think top managers in UEFA will simply fly down and sign a contract. Dorival is in my view less than Tite, but he's far above Diniz. Dorival won the Copa do Brasil twice in a row and in one of those years, he also won the Libertadores. It's not his fault Vini Jr. got himself suspended. Brazil hasn't lost under him, despite subpar play and only moderate evolution. Let the man work. It's exceedingly unrealistic to see Brazil out of the 2026 World Cup; winning it is another matter, but even if Brazil disappoints in 2026 more than it did in 2018 or in 2022, we fans can only blame CBF and hopefully CBF will do a better job replacing national team managers post-World Cup. 1.5 years wasted is, as we all now see, extremely difficult to recover.
Do you think Brazil played better tonight than vs. Colombia? I do not mean to say or to imply Brazil played great futebol tonight, but I do believe there was at least a small measure of improvement. The way many were speaking pre-match, it was as if Uruguay was going to steamroll over Brazil. Theirs is a more cohesive team overall, but Uruguay failed to score against us. I do believe there has been improvement, although obviously not enough to reach the final. Again, and I'm sure you'll agree, this is a project which began very recently. Had Dorival taken over on January 1, 2023, would Brazil be in 6th in WCQ?
I definitely don't think we would have 3 losses in qualifying. I don't know that we'd have more wins though, based on Dorival's offense so far and his game management. That would probably mean we'd maybe be in 5th, 4th at best. I'm not worried (yet) about qualifying. We've faced the worst stretch of matches already: Uruguay away, Colombia away, Argentina at home. And we're technically on the inside right now, not on the outside looking in. The difference is we aren't about to qualify 5 or 6 rounds early. (Actually, with 6 teams qualifying directly, Tite would probably qualify 8 or 9 round early). What I am worried about is whether Dorival Jr. has enough ideas to overcome the issues we see. I don't think, on its own, being knocked out in the quarters of Copa America matters much. Dorival has been reasonable in his post-match evaluations, but can he put together pre-match plans that change things? The 4-3-3 doesn't work. I don't think we need something radical like a 5-3-2 (though that could work with the pieces we have), but I do think we need to consider strengthening the midfield, whether that's a 4-4-2 or something else isn't important, it's whether we can find a way to impose ourselves on the match in some way.
Post-match. One point they are hammering home is that Dorival has the Brazilian coach mentality of buying time by not losing (and that's a criticism of the pressure on coaches and the Brazilian approach, more than a criticism of Dorival in this context).
I think Vini Jr has his work cut out. As it is he is fighting with lowlifes on the race front. In addition, he will never get soft bogus penalty handouts every game, easy and clearly biased draws, or tournaments set up almost every year or every alternate year to help him win, unlike the guy you mentioned in your post. He has to fight to win, and he has that fight in him. He will win something with Brazil.
If Dorival wants to run the 4-3-3, he's gonna have to find different players in the middle. Paqueta, Gomes, and Guimaraes ain't working.
The only thing we might "have done better" today was we didn't get pinned back as much as we did vs Colombia. Today Uruguay started like that but then backed off a bit. So IMO it was more on them. It wasn't us that started to break through their press. Long ball after long ball from the back was the only way we got the ball out for a while. And in attack, we did absolutely nothing. I think there were 3 dangerous plays total that I remember and one of them was Uruguay bad pass to Endrick. It was a complete mess. So overall ... no, I don't think we did any better than we did against Colombia. I didn't see a difference.
No, we can't wait till a disastrous run in 2026 WC. If the coach needs to be fired so be it and it has to happen now rather than later. A WC disappointment is difficult thing to endure for next 4 years. We have 2 more years to work on and I urge CBF to make whatever changes now rather than wait for another disappointment in 2026.