World Cup Brazil 2014

Time Magazine published this article “Is China ready to host the World Cup – in 16 Years?“.

China is considering to bid to host the FIFA World Cup in 2026 (the bidding processes for 2018 and 2022 are under way, and biddings are closed). According to Time, so big is the presence of China in the World today (in Economy, Sports, culture, Politics, etc) that the country stands good chances to host the event in 2026.

Brazil and China have had a long, stable and peaceful relationship.

There are no precise numbers about the Chinese population in Brazil (Chinese live dispersed,  there are no Chinatowns in Brazil); in 2005, there were already more than 200,000 Chinese in Brazil (enough to fill up any of the Stadiums of the World Cup), but the number certainly has been growing fast since.

More recently, with the economic growth of both countries, the commercial trading exploded, and so did the number of travellers;  in 2010, China will be the biggest foreign investor in Brazil.

But can the China Team play in the World Cup 2014 in Brazil?

According to Time, no; football in China is incipient, is plagued by corruption and lacks attention from the Government (a tennis table team can win tens of medals in the Olympics, but a football team can win only one). The New York Times also asked where are China soccer stars?

However, it won’t be a surprise if China manages to qualify for 2014, again.  The Chinese played in the World Cup 2002, and played against Brazil; Brazil won by 4 x 0, the movie below shows the goals.

The Asia Confederation is given 4.5 slots for the World Cup (four secured slots, and a slot defined in a play-off against a team from other Confederation). In 2006, the Qualified teams were Japan, South Korea, Saudi Arabia and  Iran (China lost to Kuwait). In 2010, the Qualified teams were Japan, Australia, South Korea and North Korea (China lost to the Australians).

So, it won’t be an easy task for China to qualify, as Japan, South Korea and Australia seem to be conquering a supremacy in that region; however, the remaining slots have been taken by underdogs (China was one, in 2002), and the Chinese Team could very well take one of them in 2014. Last June, right before the World Cup 2010, China won France by 1 x 0 (see movie).

What is certain is that if China comes to the World Cup 2014, it will only contribute to the success of the event.

Mano Menezes, the new coach of Brazil, has just announced his first call up, for the match against the USA Team, in New Jersey, August 8th.

There are only four players who participated of the World Cup 2010: Robinho, Tamires, Thiago Silva and Daniel Alves. Ten players are first comers, including Neymar and Ganso.

The roster:

Goalkeepers: Renan (Avai FC), Jefferson (Botafogo) and Victor (Gremio).

Defense: Andre Santos (Fenerbahce), Daniel Alves (Barcelona), Marcelo (Real Madrid), Rafael (Manchester United), David Luis (Benfica), Henrique (Racing Santander), Rever (Atletico MG) and Thiago Silva (Milan).

Midfield: Jucilei (Corinthians), Lucas (Liverpool), Ramires (Benfica), Sandro (Internacional SC), Carlos Eduardo (Hoffenhein), Ederson (Lyon), Paulo Henrique Ganso (Santos FC), Hernanes (Sao Paulo FC).

Forward: Alexandre Pato (Milan), Andre (Santos FC), Diego Tardelli (Atletico MG), Neymar (Santos FC) and Robinho (Santos FC).

Update, August 10th 2010: Brazil won USA by 2 x 0, goals by Neymar and Pato; the media praised the new Brazilian team (see the New York Times).

The movie below shows the goals and the best plays of the game.

Today, the CBF site published an official note to inform that Mano Menezes is the new coach of Brazil National team. Yesterday, Muricy Ramalho was invited, but could not accept the invitation because he already had a contract with another team.

Mano Menezes (see official site and wikipedia), born in 1962, is currently coach of Corinthians, in Sao Paulo.

His name is Luis Antônio Venker de Menezes. In Portuguese, “mano” is synonym (not slang) for “brother”; the term “mano”, however, is used as slang for “close friend”.

And Mano is indeed a nice person, close friend to several players, team directors, journalists, etc.  His twitter is said to be the second most popular in Brazil – only one popular TV star has more followers than Mano.

As a football player, he only performed in amateur teams, and there is nothing worthy commenting.

As a coach, he had two titles in the State League of Rio Grande do Sul in 2006 and 2007 and another one in Sao Paulo in 2009; at national level, he won the Cup of Brazil in 2009.

CBF considered that these credentials are good enough to lead Mano Menezes to be the the coach who will try to win the World Cup 2014 in Brazil, certainly the most important tournament ever disputed by the Brazilian National Team.

Update: CBF issued a short note to inform that “CBF invited Muricy Ramalho Friday morning to be the new coach of the Brazilian team; Friday afternoon, Muricy responded that he couldn’t accept the invitation, for he wasn’t released by Fluminense, team with whom he has contractual relationship”.

CBF just announced Muricy Ramalho as the new coach of the Brazil team.

Muricy is currently managing Fluminense FC, from Rio, which is the leader of the First Division of the Brazilian League (last night, Fluminense won Cruzeiro by 1 x 0).

Muricy started his coach career as pupil of Tele Santana (manager of Brazilian team in the World Cups of 1982 and 1986, considered by many the best Brazilian football coach of all times), in the early 1990s.

Muricy won his first  titles in State championships of 2001 and 2002, with Nautico, in Recife. In 2003, he was State champion with Internacional, in Porto Alegre. In 2004, he was champion with Santo Andre, in Sao Paulo. In 2005, he was again champion with Internacional.

Then, Muricy moved up to win National championships. He was Brazilian champion with Sao Paulo FC in 2006, 2007 and 2008.

In 2009, he coached Palmeiras, which led the tournament for several rounds, but failed near the finals. Since April 2010, he had been coaching Fluminense.

These achievements show that, today, no other coach in Brazil has more results to show than Muricy.

Other candidates were Luis Felipe Scollari (champion of 2002), Wanderley Luxemburgo (coach of the Olympic Team in 1996), Leonardo (player in 1994 and ex-Director of Milan AC) and Mano Menezes (currently coach of Corinthians, whose President is a close friend of Ricardo Teixeira, President of CBF – the man with powers to appoint the coach of the Brazilian team).

The first match of Muricy will be a friendly agains the USA Team on August 10th 2010 in New Jersey. As Brazil won’t have to play the Qualifying for 2014, it is very likely that Muricy will keep his position until then.

As a player, Muricy was an idol in Sao Paulo FC in the mid-1970s. He could have had a bright career in the Brazil National Team, if he hadn’t contenders such as Zico, Rivelino and Falcão.

Follow Muricy’s twitter.

Below, some images of Muricy as a player.

On July 2nd 2010, the Brazilian National Team lost to Holland, and started preparing for the World Cup 2014.

The first step is to find a new coach (Dunga and his staff were dismissed right after arriving in Brazil, back from South Africa).

According to Brazilian news, some of the candidates are Felipe Scollari (coach of the champion team of 2002), Leonardo (who played in the champion team of 1994 and had a recent and brief experience as coach of Milan AC), Vanderlei Luxemburgo (the greatest winner of titles of the Brazilian league, but who had a not very sucessful experience as coach of the National Team in 1998-2000) and others.

The decision is up to Ricardo Teixeira, President of the powerful Brazilian Confederation.

Teixeira said that he will appoint the new coach still in July 2010, for the Brazilian team already have a friendly match scheduled for August 10th 2010, against the USA team.

Update: on July 24th, Teixeira announced that Mano Menezes is the new coach of Brazil.

Update: on July 23rd 2010, Teixeira announced that Muricy Ramalhos is the new coach of Brazil.

Teixeira is also President of the World Cup Local Committee; as such, he should be very busy preparing the stadiums for 2014.

Brazil is the only country in the World which won’t have to play Qualifying for the World Cup 2014.

There are few doubts that Maracanã will be the stage of the final match of the World Cup 2014 in Brazil. São Paulo, the most powerful Brazilian State (both in economic and sports terms) is claiming to have the right to stage the opening match of the Cup (in a fierce competition with Brasilia and Belo Horizonte), but nobody dares to claim the final match from Rio and Maracanã.

Yesterday, Flamengo (the most popular team in the World, measured by number of fans) and Goias had a match; Flamengo had a chance to take the leadership of the Brazilian League 2009 (the match ended 0 x 0, Flamengo missed this chance, but is just one point behind leader Sao Paulo FC).

The match was in Maracanã, the largest stadium in Brazil, the largest football stadium in the World. The match was attended by (official numbers, lower than real numbers, as many people get in unregistered) 83,489 people.

This figure is far from the record attendance of nearly 200,000 people in the final of the 1950 World Cup; however, as security measures oblige stadium to decrease capacity, it is unlikely that any other stadium in the World will see such big crowd in the near future.

The biggest attraction of the match were not the players or the goals; it was the crowd. Flamengo is not only the biggest, but also the most passionate supporting crowd in Brazil. After several years (last time was in 1992), Flamengo has strong chances to become the Brazilian champion.

To mark the event, Flamengo’s fans created the largest human mosaic of all times. See below.

The human mosaic reads, against a background with the colors of Flamengo, the message: “A Maior Torcida do Mundo Faz a Diferença” (The Biggest Supporting Crowd in the World Makes the Difference).

Flamengo will play again in Maracanã on December 6th, against Grêmio (another ex-Brazilian and World champion), and the match may be deciding the Brazilian championship. Another big party is expected.

Anyone who follows the Brazilian football team will hear often about CBF, the powerful Brazilian Football Confederation.

It is a Confederation because it is a congregation of the State Federations. In Brazil, the law determines that each State should have a Federation for each professional sport; see, for example, sites of the Football Federations of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the two most powerful in Brazil; see also sites of the Confederation of Volei and Confederation of Aquatic Sports.

Until 1979, all sports had, at national level, only one Confederation, called CBD – Confederação Brasileira de Desportos; until 1978, the Brazilian uniform brings the letters CBD, instead of the current CBF.

All professional football teams are affiliate to the Federation of the respective State. According to law, there are periodic elections  to choose the President and Directors of the State Federations. Still according to law, the State Federations have the power to elect the President of the Confederation.

This way of managing power in football causes some problems. In a Federation, the vote of all teams have the same weight; so, in São Paulo, for example, the vote of São Paulo FC (the team with most Brazilian championships ever) has the same weight of any team in the second division of that State. Also, in the national voting, all Federations have the same weight; powerful São Paulo has the same voice as the State of Acre, where there is barely a professional championship.

So, the President of CBF is not necessarily the most popular among the teams, much less the most popular among Brazilian citizens and fans. It is possible to happen (and it has indeed happened – the current President has been in office since January of 1989) that the President of CBF is the person with great political abilities to get votes from smaller teams or weaker States, where it is easier to influence voters.

This explains, for example, why the last match of the Brazilian team in the Qualifying for 2010 World Cup happened in Campo Grande (see video), a city in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul. That State was pissed off because it was not chosen as one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup; the President of CBF brought the match to Campo Grande to try calm down the Mato Grosso do Sul Federation (and possibly gain a vote in the next elections).

Read more information about the Powers of CBF.

On October 16th, the Brazilian team was beaten by Ghana, and finished second of the FIFA Under 20 World Cup, which took place in Cairo, Egypt. After 120 minutes of match, none of the teams managed to score a goal; the decision was in penalties shoot-outs (Brazilians lost three penalties in a row).

The line-up of the Brazilian team in the final match was: Rafael, Douglas (Wellington Junior), Dalton, Rafael Tolói and Diogo; Renan (Maicon), Souza, Giuliano and Paulo Henrique (Douglas Costa); Alex Teixeira and Alan Kardec.
Alex Teixeira was awarded the silver ball of the tournament, and Giuliano was awarded the bronze ball.

As these players are all younger than 20, they will be younger than 25 by the time of the 2014 World Cup. So, it’s natural to think that some of these players will be in the Brazilian team of 2014.

None of them, however, seems to be a strong candidate for a star. None of them is an important player in their clubs.

World Cup in South Africa will be the 19th of all times. Only Brazil attended all 18 Cups so far, only Brazil will have attended all 19 Cups when the South Africa event is over, and only Brazil can say for sure that will have participated in all 20 Cups until 2014.

Recently, Brazil qualified for the World Cup 2010; as Brazil is host of the 2014 World Cup, the Brazilian team has a secured presence in that tournament.

Brazil will have hosted the Cup in two occasions (1950 and 2014); Brazil was champion five times, but in only three of these occasions (1958, 1962, 1970) was the champion automatically qualified for the next Cup; in 1930, the teams were chosen by invitation. In the other 14 times that Brazil attended a World Cup, the team had to earn it in the field.

Italy (four times World Champion) was out of the 1930 Cup, but one may say that the Italians prudently didn’t want to take a long trip to play a then non-important tournament in distant Uruguay (only four European countries attended the Cup in Uruguay: Belgium, France, Romania and Yugoslavia);  however, Italy failed to qualify for the 1958 World Cup.

Germany also declined from going to Uruguay in 1930, and were banned from the 1950 Cup, the first one after the World War II (hard to say whether the German team would qualify to the 1950 Cup, as the country was wrecked by the War; however, it must be noticed that the Germans won the next Cup, in 1954).

No other country comes close to Brazil, Italy and Germany in terms of World Cup participations.

Argentina withdrew from playing the qualifyings in 1938, 1950 and 1954; in 1970, Argentina failed to qualify to the Cup in Mexico. France did not qualify for the tournament in 1950, 1962, 1970, 1974, 1990 and 1994.

While most countries see the qualification for a World Cup as an achievement to be celebrated, Brazilians see it as an obligation of the football team.