Brazil: All the Way or No Way
The Brazilian fans may expect more from their national team than some European nations may do. And the way the expectations in general are being handled impresses me considerably when I read European newspapers since before the tournament.
In Brazil, the general feeling is the international team must win the World Cup and that’s that: no excuses at all. You hear this in the streets and in the press.
There’s nothing that could be considered a decent performance if the World Cup doesn’t come to Brazil after 20 years. I hear different things from my European colleagues and friends. A lot of English friends consider that England has been improving and that 2022 could be the year of the crowning of British football once again.
But the discussions are more focused on what could happen. In Brazil, the tone is more like ‘I don’t even want to hear about anything other than winning this thing!’.
In Belgium, there was the long discussion of how far the so-called Golden Generation could go. In Portugal, after two recent titles, they allowed themselves to dream. France was brave to recover from the early blow of losing Benzema and has been performing well.
Germany is an interesting case in my opinion. They have a player like Toni Kroos playing at an amazing level at Real Madrid, but he chose not to be a part of this squad which probably impacted their performance in Qatar. Having a seasoned leader, who’s a second-choice captain in the mighty Real Madrid, would have been useful, but… Toni Kroos decided to watch it from home…
That would be unthinkable in Brazil, at least in 2022! The Brazilian players seem to be aligned with the people of their country.
You see TV ads with kids saying (my grandparents saw Brazil winning, and so did my father, but I didn’t! Play for me guys!) This stuff has an impact on the players, for sure. Especially upon such a young squad that is frequently checking their phones and the trending stuff on social media.
In a nutshell, in Brazil, the World Cup is an obsession, and perhaps only Argentines can understand what happens here right now. However, Argentina lived a tough time without international trophies between the Copa America titles of 1993 and 2021, so perhaps even Argentina may dream of a title with Messi without so much obsession as the Brazilian football fans.
Anyways, Brazil, Argentina and other big international selections like France and England will dominate the thoughts of football fans wondering what are the odds for the next games and for the next World Cup Champion. Betting fans can find everything about it at เว็บไซต์พนันออนไลน์.com.
The Best is Only… On TV
Brazil also lives a phenomenon which was addressed indirectly by FIFA’s President Gianni Infantino in a recent remark before the World Cup.
Infantino mentioned that FIFA doesn’t want the whole world to love the best of football via their TVs. They want local talent to blossom before their eyes and not just send their crème de la crème living their prime to Europe and only get to see the first steps of their careers and their farewell games.
The last two World Cups that Brazil won, in 1994 and 2002, already had lots of players active in Europe when those cups happened.
But if you analyse the situation in a broader way… The result is more than a thousand players from Brazil play abroad. And the most famous and expensive names usually spend the best years of their football lives outside Brazil.
The International team, for Brazil, and for Argentina, are some kind of avengers, as sometimes, the clubs feel exploited by the financial power of European clubs.
While in Europe we are seeing frequent early international retirements (Philipp Lahm retired from Germany when he was 30 after lifting the 2014 World Cup). If Thiago Silva had lifted that trophy, he’d still be active in 2018 and probably in the ongoing World Cup.
