Brazil’s Parriera to use the Quartet

Winning the World Cup might be the pinnacle for any football player or coach, but it is not what Brazil coach Carlos Alberto Parreira considers his finest achievement.

“Qualifying for the World Cup with Kuwait was much better than winning it with Brazil,” he said. “I worked there for eight years, we built everything from zero. It was fantastic.”

Parriera is in an enviable position this time around, coaching a team that is on paper the most talented in the tournament. His biggest challenge will be to keep his star-studded roster happy.

With Ronaldinho, Ronaldo, Kaka, Robinho and Adriano on his team, Parriera promises to keep at least a Quartet on the field, a move that I believe is going to make Brazil the highest scoring team in the field, but also susceptible to giving up goals of its own. All five of those players are talented in the attack, but they will be forced to defend as well which is something they rarely have to do for their club teams.

For this reason alone I don’t think Brazil is unstoppable. Sure they finally have a quality goalkeeper and their defense is not as bad as some, but it is a weakness and on any given day a good team can exploit another team’s weakness.

Brazil deserves to be the favorite and Parreira deserves credit for guiding the ship. But it is far too early to hand them the trophy and for a Kuwait-style celebration to begin.