Brazil 3 Canada 2: Someone Forgot to Tell the Players that it’s Not the Holidays!

First and foremost I didn’t see the match live, so my account of what took place has come from match summaries and Highlights. But the main gist of the situation I gathered was the Seleção
decided to take an early holiday, which in turn means the backline decided not to defend. Full marks to Canada for pressing the game and having a go because it highlighted further problems in which I have stated in the previous post, the central midfield yields no creation, plus losses the ball too damn frequently.

The start of the match began in true carrinha fashion with Brazil taking the lead within four minutes with a little razzle dazzle skill from Robinho, then finding Diego for a nice finish. Everyone thing was going to script and Brazil were showing their dominance, only problems was they forgot there was another team on the pitch and down the other end Canada managed to equalize within a few minutes with Julio César trying his best Michael Jordan performance, maybe not entirely his fault the defence did leave him hanging and stop dead in their tracks but still he is Inter’s number 1 it shouldn’t be happening, 1 all, and Brazil stuttering began. After that point Canada took the game by the scruff of the neck by missing many one on one chances in which any other side would’ve put Brazil 3-1 down. Evidently Brazil were playing a high defensive line as the central midfielders weren’t doing their job defensively (Like they do anything offensively), Canada were easily slicing through the Brazilian defence like cheese. Luis Fabiano then restored the Brazilian lead somewhat against the run of play by scrambling a powerful header across the line, an underserved 2-1 lead going into half time. The second half pretty much carried on in the same fashion with Canada pressing forward and De Guzman scoring a beautiful goal from the edge of the box. Complacency again cost Brazil here as the midfield didn’t know who should go to De Guzman, and the defence which had been ‘having a great day all game’ was obviously going to fluff their lines again. De Guzman a few minutes later tried another shot, this time just brushing wide. Brazil then managed to conjure something together and Fabiano’s nice finish was rightly spotted as offside. Julio César who had made up a little for his earlier mistake still decided to show the cameras that he can fly like Mike and nearly let in another equaliser, Canada looked as if they could cause an upset. That was until De Guzman decided to have a hero become villain moment and place an amazing threw ball to the only Brazilian on the pitch, Robinho easily accelerated past the Canadian keeper to give Brazil another undeserved lead. Canada now feeling hard done by kept coming and had to two chances to further claw themselves back level with Brazil, but to no avail, the yellow jerseys managed to hold on for an underserved win. Adriano did make a brief appearance at the end and all new reports written state he played well and worked hard which is a plus. His threw ball at the end of the match and long distance shot at least show a love for the jersey.

Bright images of the day: At least Brazil always consistently manages to bring a colourfull audience

A little to close to call for the Seleção, hopefully this was just a summer-time blip for Robinho and Co’

To conclude this joke of a performance Brazil yet again was bailed out by the magic of Robinho, the rest of the squad looked rusty less cohesive than usual, plus Dunga’s weird high defensive line was never going to work when all the teams’ width is created by the full backs. The midfield was exposed for all its frailties and lack of creativeness. Imagine if this was an actual decent side, we would’ve really been in the shit! Period. This was a good wake-up call we needed to change the way we play, because the quality in midfield is severely lacking, a play maker is desperately needed if Brazil ever want to reach the heights of the beautiful game again. The match was a friendly, but still against Canada this should’ve been a training match with the squad of players taken, these are the guys who are meant to be taking on Argentina and Paraguay in the up and coming World cup qualifiers. Hopefully by then the players should have familiarised themselves with the yellow jersey again. They have one last chance left to re-produce some cohession and experiment before the big qualifiers against rising minnows Venezuela.

Heres a good highlight reel of the Shambles at Qwest field