The walls finally collapsed after the abject humiliation of the 4-1 defeat to Argentina in World Cup qualifying at the end of March, a game where Brazil in which dominated from first to last. Coach Dorival Júnior appeared hopelessly out of his depth — and he was the last card played by the sizable lobby arguing that Brazil did not need a foreign coach.
With a certain urgency, Brazil set about warming up their prolonged flirt with Carlo Ancelotti. And on Monday, the white smoke emerged. The new Pope may be from the United States, but Brazil’s coach is Italian.
In some corners, that is controversial. For the traditionalists, it is something of an affront that a foreign-born coach is taking charge of the only team to win the World Cup five times, and all of them with Brazilian coaches.
The people least concerned with all of this will surely be the players themselves. Brazil’s stars are well used to working with coaches of different nationalities. Some of the big names have worked successfully with Ancelotti. Vinícius Júnior, in particular, has a close relationship with the Italian and will be delighted to continue working with him. There may also be a recall for Casemiro, previously an Ancelotti stalwart at Real Madrid.
He has been out of the national team for the past year, but could well be seen as a solution to shore up central midfield, Brazil’s biggest problem area in the current World Cup qualification campaign. Indeed, it has been reported that Ancelotti has already been in contact with Casemiro and also with Neymar.
It will be fascinating to see how he handles Brazil’s all-time top scorer. Dorival Júnior was prepared to rush Neymar back well before he was close to peak fitness, a plan that had to be abandoned after yet another injury. With Neymar not due back on the field until June 1, it is hard to see how he can figure in the games early next month, and after that, it will be up to the player to prove his fitness.
Ancelotti’s success with Brazilian players was just one of the aspects that made him so attractive to the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol, Brazil’s FA. For CBF president Ednaldo Rodrigues, he ticked every box.
He was a top-class midfielder with World Cup experience, so often a plus for an international coach. As an assistant to Arrigo Sacchi with the Italy national team back at the 1994 World Cup in the United States, he has tournament experience on the managerial side. And, with an extraordinary capacity to adapt, he has molded himself to different circumstances so well that he has won league titles in all five of the major European leagues, plus a heap of UEFA Champions League conquests.
Brazil have not won a World Cup since 2002. Since then, every campaign has come unstuck as soon as they come up against a European side in the knockout stages. Ancelotti is seen as the man to get them over that hurdle.
“Bringing Carlo Ancelotti to take charge of Brazil is more than a strategic move,” said Rodrigues. “It is a declaration to the world that we are determined to win back our position at the top of the podium.
“He is the best coach in history, and now he is with the best national team on the planet. Together we are going to write glorious new chapters in Brazilian football.”
The first chapter will be a rush. Brazil need to call up their squad this week for the coming World Cup qualifiers away to Ecuador and at home to Paraguay, two of South America’s in-form sides. Ancelotti does not formally take over until May 26, and will have to get up to speed quickly for the games on June 5 and June 10. He can then prepare in relative calm for FIFA dates towards the end of the year.
He has two big advantages. The first is the expansion of the World Cup. Brazil are fourth in South America’s table, just a point ahead of sixth-placed Colombia and with some tricky games ahead. In any previous tournament, Brazil would be scrambling around to ensure a place in the competition. This time, with more teams qualifying, things would have to go disastrously wrong for Brazil to miss out on 2026. In practice, he can already start thinking about the World Cup.
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Alex Kirkland reacts to the news that Carlo Ancelotti will leave Real Madrid at the end of the season to take charge of the Brazilian national team.
The other is that things can hardly get worse. The performance against Argentina was so abject that a repetition does not bear thinking about. Brazil have been a bad side with good players. Any other country would be delighted to have Brazil’s goalkeepers, center backs, and wingers. In his own low-profile way, Ancelotti will seek to hide the defects and accentuate the strengths. He only needs to raise an eyebrow — Roger Moore style — to command instant credibility.
In fact, there is nothing new about foreign coaches in the Brazilian game. When the national team set off for the 1958 World Cup in Sweden, Brazil was still considered South America’s third force. Uruguay and Argentina were faster out of the blocks, and coaches from both nations played an important role in the development of Brazilian football.
Uruguay’s Ramón Platero was on the touchline for the 1925 Copa América. Then came the Hungarians. Indeed, a Uruguayan (Ondino Viera) and a Hungarian (Béla Guttmann) both played a part in the tactical formation of the Brazil side that won their first World Cup in 1958 — and the coach of the team was nearly a Paraguayan, Manuel Fleitas Solich.
Much of this was airbrushed out of history after the triumphs of 1958, 1962 and 1970. But in a global game such as football, ideas and approaches are always bouncing around from place to place. Over the years, Ancelotti has been influenced by Brazilians that he has played with and coached, and he has also been an influence on the other side of the Atlantic.
Ancelotti was the main reference point for Tite, the coach who took Brazil to the past two World Cups. Both times, they could consider themselves a little unfortunate to fall in the quarterfinals. In 2018, they surely deserved to take the game against Belgium to extra time, and four years later, they fell on penalties to a Croatia team whose only shot on target — which took a deflection — came in the closing stages of extra time.
If Ancelotti can get them further — into the semifinals and on to their sixth title — then he really can go down as the greatest coach in football history.
