Dunga sacked (again) and Brazil national team haunted by ghosts of glorious past

Brazil's Elias during the 1-0 defeat to Peru at Copa America. Jim Rogash / Getty Images

For most of the time I was growing up in the ’80s and 90s, Brazil were ghosts. They were ghosts of the great sides past that had won three World Cups in 12 years. Specifically the sides of Pele, Garrincha, Didi and then Jairzinho, Rivellino, Tostao and Carlos Alberto.

They wore yellow and blue like their predecessors but sages would tell us with the condescension that comes from having lived on the planet for longer, that this was not the same yellow and blue. That yellow and blue? Why, son, that yellow and blue was so vivid it burst through black and white TVs.

But I thought the yellow and blue of my time still had some glitter. One of the earliest conscious memories I have of Brazil is from Italia ’90, the highlight of which was the second-round encounter with Argentina. Most people remember that game for the Claudio Caniggia goal that won it – or, more likely, the Maradona assist.

Or they remember a Brazil side with a sweeper and a nasty streak – they shredded Maradona in that game. This was the beginning of the era of Carlos Dunga: functional, thuggish, football with a snarl, not a smile.

 

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That is a harsh and arguably incorrect recollection, because Brazil pummeled Argentina in that game, striking the frame of the goal on several occasions and otherwise missing several chances.

The goals might not show it (they scored just four), but Brazil dominated the four games they played, and the forward line of the vastly under-celebrated Careca and Muller were responsible for some of the prettiest play in the tournament.

Their finishing let them down, but neither Brazil’s style, nor intent, should have been as disparaged as it was.

Maradona called the 1994 side that won the World Cup the “ugliest" Brazil side he had seen, but Maradona makes as measured assessments as he does decisions. They were not great admittedly, but anything that ended with Romario or Bebeto, could never be truly ugly.

The opposite was true about the 1998 and 2002 sides. Their beauty was overplayed in the dreamy ad campaigns of Nike. But still, they had the virtuosity of Rivaldo, not to mention peak, original Ronaldo. They were great to watch, just not as great as the packaging said.

Yet each one of them lived under the crushing legacy of those earlier sides, or even the famed 1982 side, which though it did not win the World Cup, interpreted football as a pure expression of art. At best these modern sides were good but not good enough. At worst, they were a shameful stain.

Now, the modern Brazil seems to have snapped wholesale under the weight of that legacy. On Sunday they failed to progress past the group stages of the Copa America, losing their final game to Peru, a side they had not lost to in 31 years.

Many were the ignominies seeping out of that loss, to compound the fact of the dubiousness of the winning goal.

It was the first time Brazil, eight time winners of the competition, had not made it to the quarter-finals since 1993. It was the second game of three in which they failed to score, although they did score seven in the other, though Haiti can hold few pretensions as a footballing opponent.

Meanwhile, Neymar was chilling with global celebrities on Instagram.

Dunga, hair as spiky as temperament, and the symbol of all of Brazil’s modern water-carrying style, is gone as manager again.

Coming two years after that haunting 7-1 semi-final loss to Germany, and a quarter-final exit at the Copa last year, it is impossible to escape the sense that a critical mass is building up, hurtling Brazil’s football side to a deep, unthinkable abyss.

That could be failure to qualify for the 2018 World Cup where they currently sit outside the qualification positions in Conmebol’s group, though they still have 12 games to catch up. It could be worse, nobody can say.

Seasoned observers say the people of Brazil are becoming indifferent to the fortunes of the national side, an unthinkable assessment a decade ago. The football federation has not been left untainted in the Fifa corruption scandals.

Perhaps most telling of this diminishing status is the growing exodus of Brazil’s talent to the Chinese Super League. Over a third of the league’s foreign players are Brazilian and only five of the top 16 clubs do not have a Brazilian on the books. Brazil’s finest have always been the subject of foreign raiding, of course, but generally, they have gone to bigger, better and shinier leagues in Europe.

That has helped them.

To now be shunted to a rich but lesser league continues a slow creep off the radar, and constitutes a far truer dulling of that yellow and blue.

CREDIT TO:http://www.thenational.ae/sport/football/dunga-sacked-again-and-brazil-national-team-haunted-by-ghosts-of-glorious-past