“You can only win for the sixth time if you’ve already won five”– that was part of the lyrics to a video clip that Brazil played just before announcing on Monday a World Cup squad that they hope will end a 20-year wait for the title.
Confidence is high. Recent results have been excellent, and, as the squad shows, coach Tite has derived the benefit of a full cycle in charge of the national team.
Tite had less than two years in the run up to 2018 edition in Russia. There were players in that squad with almost no chance of getting on the field because they had never really been part of the process. A handful were merely making up the numbers. But if four years ago Brazil had problems filling up a list of 23, this time they had the opposite challenge — with three more places available.
Who to leave out in a list of 26? Many of the headlines will go to an inclusion that may be a surprise — that of 39-year-old Daniel Alves — and some of the first questions in the news confidence were about the former Barcelona right-back, now with Liga MX team Pumas and with little recent football behind him.
The Brazil coaching staff have been following Alves closely and are convinced that he is fit enough — especially as the role of the full-back in Tite’s team is radically different from the way they played in sides of the past. Brazil are no longer looking for auxiliary wingers, for Cafu and Roberto Carlos to keep running up and down the line. At his current age, there is no way that Alves could carry out that function. Instead, Brazil see him (and Danilo, the likely first choice right-back) holding the defensive line, tucking in as an extra midfielder and helping build play from the back — a role that requires more brain power than lung power.
But there must have been a temptation to leave out Alves, go with just one right-back in the squad, and use centre-back Eder Militao as possible cover for the position. This would have opened up an extra slot for an attacker — because it was here that Tite had to make his hardest decision.
