World Cup Buzz

We’ve seen it with the Mexicans all the time, we’ve seen it in Europe and yes last night we saw it in Brazil: A home crowd turning on its own team in a crucial World Cup qualifier. This crowd reaction culminated with wild applause as Lionel Messi was subbed out late in the match. The draw does just enough perhaps to keep Dunga his job as Brazil’s coach but time seems to be running out. But why? He won Copa America with an inferior squad to Argentina and the current table not withstanding we all know Brazil will qualify for the World Cup, right?

Brazilians are spoiled. They want beautiful soccer and winning football: Jogo Bonito. Right now Dunga feels the way to beat the Argentines who have vastly more talent than Brazil or anyone on the planet is to clog up the middle and take away space for the attackers. That requires an approach unfamiliar to Brazilian Football but effective in stopping the Argentines. But it is an approach that irritates the Brazilian faithful.

The reality of this match is that Brazil did what it had to do to deny Messi and his fellow Argentine attackers enough good chances to score a goal. Brazil playing without Kaka and Ronaldinho among others stole a point if you look at it that way. The bigger problem for Brazil may be long term as it appears the younger generation of Brazilian players haven’t developed quickly and Dunga is instead calling on many older players who weren’t critical parts of Brazil’s past success at the international level.

The Argentines have drawn their last three matches: A friendly at the USA, and qualifiers versus Ecuador and Brazil. Brazil is also struggling after being fortunate to beat Canada in a friendly, the Brazilians dropped a friendly to Venezuela, a qualifier to Paraguay and now have drawn with Argentina at home.

The Argentines however wanted more from the match: Juan Roman Riquelme stated “We are not happy with a draw because we came here to win and I think we deserved to do so. It’s a pleasure to play in a team like this, though, to be able to come to Brazil and play the way we did. That’s one thing we should be happy about,”

Here are the current COMNEBOL World Cup Qualifying standings:

1. Paraguay, 13 pts (GD +8)
2. Argentina, 11 (+6)
3. Colombia, 10 (+2)
4. Brazil, 9 (+4)
5. Uruguay, 8 (+9)
6. Venezuela, 7 (+0)
7. Chile, 7 (-1)
8. Ecuador 5 (-6)
9. Bolivia 4 (-10)
10. Peru 3 (-12)

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