This edition of the Copa America has been dogged with problems and issues for months, with matters coming to a head in the weeks leading up to the tournament when it was confirmed that Colombia would no longer be able to host the tournament. Argentina stepped in instead, but they too had the hosting rights taken away due to the rising number of COVID-19 cases in the country. It was finally announced that Brazil would host the 2021 Copa America, which was greeted with a lot of bemusement and confusion, if were being polite, since Brazil is in the midst of a devastating surge of the virus as well. While the merits and demerits of those decisions can be debated for a long time, the tournament did finally manage to kick off to give CONMEBOL some sort of relief as it aims to align the Copa with the European Championship hosting cycle, making this the fourth Copa America tournament in just six years.
Brazil, the hosts, kicked things off with a relatively comfortable 3-0 win over Venezuela it must be mentioned here that Venezuela were without eight members of their squad due to positive COVID-19 tests and had to call up 15 players on the eve of the tournament. Nevertheless, there were some interesting structures and principles used by Brazil in this match, which we will attempt to understand and explain in this tactical analysis piece.
Lineups
Tite sent the side out in a lopsided 4-4-2 diamond of sorts Danilo and Renan Lodi were the starting full-backs, with Casemiro as the holding midfielder and Fred alongside him. Lucas Paquetá played as a floating playmaker off the right flank, where Gabriel Jesus was used as an old-fashioned right winger, and Neymar and Richarlison formed a front two. Lodi and Paquetá were replaced by Alex Sandro and Everton Ribeiro respectively at half-time, while Gabriel Barbosa came on for Richarlison after 65 minutes and scored the third goal two minutes from full-time.
Venezuela were in a pretty deep and conservative 5-4-1 shape, which is understandable given their issues with COVID-19. The likes of captain Tomás Rincón were ruled out due to this, while Darwin Machis and Salomon Rondon, among others, were unavailable due to injury.
