Parreira’s Words - Episode 1

Before the final list was revealed he said some words to explain the process they used to choose the 23 men that will defend our title, carrying 180 millions hearts in their shoulders.

“It’s a very big pleasure to be here today to announce to the Brazilian people, to the Brazilian fans, the list of players that will represent us in Germany. This list is a product of a very high criterion work built during a 3 and half years period, from the observations and analysis and I believe it is coherent, made of good sense, from the balance that characterizes the coach and technical commission”.

“We know about the immense responsibility that comes with defining a list in the Brazilian football with so many good players that in reality we won’t be able to include all of the players with conditions to be here. From this moment on, in order to encourage those that are present and that will represent us in the World Cup, this will now be ‘our list’. These players are now considered the best of Brazil because they are the ones that will represent us in the 2006 World Cup”.

After the announcement he started to answer questions from reporters, but I noticed that he was very annoyed about something. It seems to me that he was feeling like under the reporter’s attack. He was dead serious about every issue and he answered the questions like they were accusations, delivering hard words on the reporters. He softened that attitude when speaking to international reporters, though.

Now here is what he said about the issues reporters at the conference came up with:

About the ‘magic quintet’: “I’ve never thought about the quintet, brother. You are the one elaborating and conjecturing”. He was clearly angry here. I’ve never seen him using ‘brother’ (port. slang: ‘mano’) before. “I never said we would use the quintet, brother, whatever the opponent might be… the Seleção is not coming home earlier. Football clearly had a natural evolution. Now that everyone is playing with 10 players behind Brazil is going to walk in like a little angel with 5 forwards to come back sooner? Not with me. We will go until the end… if God permit”.

About Gilberto: “The list is a product of more than 3 years of observations by the technical commission, as I said before. If I start answering about each individual, things will get complicated for you all and for me. Just for you to remember, in the Confederations Cup semi-final against Germany and in the final against Argentina, Gilberto was the starter. It’s possible that you may have forgotten”.

About the high number (86) of players tested by him: “If we could have focused only in the main group of players this number would be a lot smaller. But since we had to open possibilities for the Copa America, when we assembled an alternate team, a mixed team, and then for that game against Guatemala, in which players of the main team were not invited, that opened many possibilities and that’s why I used such a high number of players. If we haven’t done these experiments we could have used at least 30 less players. I believe that 60 is an ideal number”.

About last changes: “The list is not something unchangeable, that we can’t modify and adjust. We must have flexibility to adapt to new situations, and that is what we’ve done. You can’t have a ‘ready list’ especially when dealing with the Brazilian football in which the options are always very wide. As I said in the beginning, many excellent players were not included, it is not possible to call every good player and that’s why we can’t say this is the best list with the best players but, for a matter of concept, for the moment we decided to go with these 23 players they now become the best players of Brazil”.

About Edmilson’s position: “The same as in Barcelona: volante”. Volante here in Brazil is the ‘sweeper’ centre-back.

His short answer left a moment of silence… At this point he was a lot more calm. Stay tuned for Episode 2!

Illustration by Cláudio Duarte for the Brazilian ‘O Globo’ newspaper.