Brazil will never win with the lineup posted a few posts up (even if Juan replaces Roque Junior). The defense would be sub-par even at the league level, and the midfield won't hold the ball. Emerson is horribly overrated, and I don't think anyone rates Ze Roberto anymore anyway. Kaka isn't much of a two-way midfielder either, obviously.
Playing against serious (and more balanced) opposition, they'll suffer. In their last 4 competitive games against Argentina and Uruguay (and those are really the only games they've played against half-decent opposition), they went 1-2-1, and the win was with a much different lineup. In the World Cup, they won't be able to win 4 in a row in the knockout stages.
Originally posted by Mezz: The last time Brazil lined up in the qualifiers, it went like this:
GK: Dida
RB: Cafu CB: Lucio CB: Roque Junior LB: Roberto Carlos
MC: Emerson MC: Ze Roberto MC: Kaká
CF: Ronaldo CF: Ronaldínho CF: Robinho
Although this line-up looks massively attacking, I don't think it's that different from a fairly standard 4-2-3-1 that we've seen a lot in the past few years:
Dida Cafu Lucio R Junior R Carlos Emerson ZeRoberto Robinho Kaka Ronaldinho Ronaldo
But they haven't been outscoring good opposition recently. It's hard to compare the team to that of past World Cups when most of the players are different; it was never the jersey winning them those games.
I guess we'll see, but I haven't been as impressed with their team as I have in the past.
By the way, I love how tha attacking quality of Brazil has reached near mythic proportions. What competitive game have they played in the last decade where the score was anything like 5-4??? 2-0, 2-1, 1-0, 2-0; those were the scores of their knockout games last Cup. The only games in qualifying where they scored 5 goals were shutouts against poor opposition.
Brazil have become this idealized team (that we'd probably all love to see) that risk giving up lots of goals to score lots of goals, but their results show that they're surely an attacking team, but nothing like this ideal.
As we look back to the past several world cups, it's clear that the success of Brazil owes to the terrific full-attacking wings largely. Compared with the line-ups of past Brazil world cups(esp.94 and 02), the upfront line is strikingly wonderful, easily the best of the world, however, the conrnerstone is somewhat shaky due to ageing. Robert Carlos, I think, is largely overrated(currently not as good as Serginho), as well as Lucio and cafu.
I wish Brazil good luck, and still reasonable to be in semifinal.
Parreira will see after the group stage that some of the usual starters are past it and he will need to use some of the newbies. It just comes down to if he has the guts to make the switches he will need.
2 down with juninho and carlos retiring, how many more to go, the hoodoo goes on for teams outside of europe not doing well in tournaments within europe! Surely ronaldo and cafu, emerson, gilberto silva should go aswell? Who is the natural for roberto carlos then?
