Archive March 26, 2025

In any previous World Cup, there would be genuine fear about Brazil failing to qualify. Not this time.

In an expanded competition, with six South American teams making it through automatically, Brazil have a six-point cushion over a Venezuela team who have just registered their first victory in 10 games.

With four rounds to go, it is impossible to see Brazil not making the cut. But that is hardly the point.

For Brazil, World Cup qualification now serves one purpose – it provides a sequence of competitive matches during which they hope to build a side capable of winning the trophy. And with just over a year to go until 2026, that looks a long way off.

It is easy to forget how good Brazil were in the last World Cup, where they lost in the quarter-finals on penalties to a Croatia team whose only shot on goal in the match took a cruel deflection.

The Qatar 2022 Brazil side were solid – goalkeeper Alisson could have taken a deckchair out for most of the games – with flashes of brilliance. They could have won that competition.

So why have they fallen back so much? How can a team packed with so many good players form such a dismal unit?

Tuesday’s prolonged humiliation did not come out of the blue.

In game after game the team have looked disjointed, without clear strategies for progressing the ball down the field, and suffering from the possibility of being both outplayed and outnumbered in central midfield.

Individual talent has papered over the cracks – like on Thursday, when a stoppage-time Vinicius Jr special gave them a victory over Colombia their play had not really deserved.

But it can’t happen all the time.

And if the film is bad, especially if the cast is impressive, the director must be to blame.

There is a crisis in Brazilian coaching. It is hard to produce coaches when there is no time to train and no job security. That is the reality of domestic Brazilian football, and helps explain why almost all of the successful coaches in the country are now foreign – either Argentine or, especially, Portuguese.

The national boss – for now anyway – Dorival Jr is a product of the domestic game, with more than four decades’ experience as player and coach.

But on the international stage he comes across as a decent man thoroughly out of his depth.

Did he really think he could travel to Argentina and play two men in central midfield? Why not drop deep and create space for the counter-attack, as he did a year ago against England at Wembley? And when cool heads were required, his team came across as a bag of nerves, all too willing to get involved in cheap spats.

Of the three duties of the coach – pick the team, determine the strategy and set the emotional tone – Dorival failed dismally, and it is very hard to see how he can keep his job.

Whoever comes in – or Dorival if he manages to hang on – will have to deal with a simple observation – central midfield is not an optional extra.

It is an area where Brazil have had a problem for a while – a consequence of the 1990s trend of splitting the middle of the park into a pair of midfielders who only defend and a duo who mostly attack. It was at this point Brazilian play lost much of its former fluency, instead investing in rapid breaks down the flanks.

It is in this context that the problems of Lucas Paqueta are so significant.

The West Ham midfielder was on the verge of becoming a big-money Manchester City signing when scandal struck, and his career – now threatened – has not recovered.

The absence of Paqueta almost certainly led to Dorival building his hopes for these international dates around the return of Neymar – which, predictably, turned out to be ludicrously premature.

After so long out injured, it was only to be expected that Neymar would run into muscular problems, and he will need much more time on the field to ease his way back to a level where he can tip the balance.

At 33, he is an unknown quantity. But there is a gaping hole in the team for the type of deep-lying playmaker role he could fill.

Romantics might recall 2002, when Ronaldo looked all washed up only to make a triumphant return from injury and carry a Brazil side that almost failed to qualify all the way to World Cup title number five.

They are still waiting for number six.

Neil Gourley wants to be “at the top of the podium” as he tries to win the 1500m title at the Tokyo World Championships in the style of Josh Kerr and Jake Wightman.

Gourley, who had inspired his own captain’s speech to the British team at the World Athletics Indoor Championships in Nanjing over the weekend, praised his fellow athletes and “leave room for the extraordinary” to inspire his first global medal over the distance.

After capturing the Norwegian star’s world 1500m gold, Gourley now wants to follow in his country’s footsteps in Japan by following in his compatriots’ footsteps.

And he continued, “It sounds like my turn, doesn’t it,” he said to BBC Scotland. That ambition is what I’m going by.

After being let down by missing the recent Glasgow World Indoor Championships, both of which were held just last year, Gourley is happy to embrace this level of ambition.

The Giffnock AC athlete’s goal of winning a middle-distance medal on the global stage has been helped by letting those mental wounds heal.

Twelve months ago, Gordon said, “I wasn’t in a great place mentally or physically. Because it would have been unique to hold the World Indoors in my hometown, I was quite upset when I saw it take place here in Glasgow.

“To compete in front of a large number of friends and family members.” On the day of the [in Nanjing]final, I had a lot of thought about that.

This one made you stronger mentally, and sometimes these things do.

Perhaps this mental fortitude helped Gourley, who had been given the honor of leading the British delegation, prepare for a rousing captain’s speech in front of his fellow athletes in Nanjing.

When asked what he told his team-mates, Gourley responded, “Leave some room for the extraordinary to happen.”

Don’t just go in the hope that you’ll do it all season or that you’ll be successful.

You must go out and make the case that there is something else, that you can take chances, and have some ambition.

Gourley’s ambition is undoubtedly paying off. His sights are both world gold and silver on the mantelpiece.

However, there is no way that his recent success will cause him to suffer.