World Cup: Day Three
Brazil had a lot of stuff happen. How much of it was good? Let's see!
Ok, we’re now at four games a day, and I really enjoyed these. When there are four football matches, it does get a little harder to write full tactical breakdowns of what happened in each of them, so think of these more as “what Grace found interesting here” than “everything that happened on this day”. Let’s get to it.
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Qatar 1-1 Switzerland
Whoops.
I don’t have a ton to say about this one and, let’s face it, most of you are here to read about other games. But I don’t think Switzerland particularly did anything wrong here other than miss chances. They got ahead through a penalty, then did exactly what I would tell them to do and kept creating chances to look for a second. They just didn’t go in. Sometimes shit happens and you get punished for it. I don’t know. I’d still back Switzerland to win this group, but there’s obviously more pressure on them when they play Bosnia and Herzegovina on Thursday.
This wasn’t a bad game, but it felt that way because the crowd were so flat. I think the stadium had more local spectators and fewer people who travelled over from Europe or the Middle East. The recipe for a good atmosphere in this World Cup is to have plenty of supporters in the ground from the countries who are actually playing. This felt stale and passive by comparison.
Brazil 1-1 Morocco
In writing this newsletter, I’ve watched a lot of Brazil games at the World Cup. I’ve written retrospectives about their campaigns in 1994, 2002, 2006 and 2014. I’ve got a good sense of what goes wrong when it doesn’t click for Brazil.
“I can hardly remember a game where they started a central midfielder really comfortable on the ball”, I wrote recently. “The entire notion of how to play football as a team has been thrown out for strength in individuals. It’s just bollocks. This Brazil team was crap and I hated watching them. Congratulations, Brazil, you ruined football.”
This was not that. This was different. It wasn’t great, but it was different.
The reason for the change is pretty obvious: Carlo Ancelotti. He’s no one’s idea of an ideologue, favouring a “whatever works for the players” tactical approach. He’s managed teams that dominated possession through a fluid short passing game and he’s managed teams happy to sit deep and hit the opposition on the break. That made it a whole lot easier for him to bin the bollocks about physicality and duels and such Brazil have spent the last few decades trying to play.
The squad meant they had to change. Brazil’s last two World Cup wins in 1994 and 2002 were all about the full backs (technically wing backs in 2002, but get a life if you’re irked by this). Their central midfielders could rarely pick out a forward pass, and their wingers either didn’t exist or were very narrow, so it was all about progressing the ball through the full backs out wide. You can do that with prime Cafu and Roberto Carlos. But Brazil don’t have anyone remotely of this calibre right now. It’s gone from a historic strength to a problem position.
That means they have to move the ball through the centre of midfield. Ancelotti started a double pivot of Casemiro and Bruno Guimarães, with Lucas Paquetá playing right midfield without the ball but generally becoming a central midfielder in possession. That felt very Ancelotti. He wanted a 4-4-2, but he found a tactical trick to make it work in a way that kept everyone happy.
So Brazil had much better passing in central areas than we’ve seen in the past. But the flip side was an incredibly open midfield. After a really good season at Manchester United, we were back to “the football’s left him” Casemiro. Let’s look at the goal. Morocco’s Noussair Mazraoui has the ball and wants to play it forward. Paquetá has drifted back over to the right. The gap between Casemiro and Guimarães looks big, but there isn’t a Morocco player who can immediately run into that gap and exploit it.
Mazraoui plays it sideways to Brahim Díaz. The other two midfielders are too far away now, so it’s all about Casemiro. Morocco’s striker, Ismael Saibari, is already running in behind and pointing to where he wants Díaz to play the ball. If Casemiro is aware of his surroundings, he’ll realise this. The best thing Casemiro can do is to stand his ground and get ready to intercept the pass Saibari wants, that Díaz is obviously looking to play. If Casemiro does that, Díaz has to pass it wide to the right back (Achraf Hakimi) and Morocco don’t get to launch a quick counter straight down the middle.
But Casemiro never turns his head to check if someone is behind him. Instead, he decides to close down Díaz, thinking he can win the ball back or at least make a tactical foul. In that time, Saibari keeps running in behind and he’s now splitting the centre backs
As it is, Casemiro doesn’t get there before Díaz gets his pass away. And yep, it’s going exactly where Saibari wanted it.
It’s a very good pass, letting Saibari go straight through the centre backs and chip it over Alisson (who came too far off his line, but shouldn’t have to be put in this position). Brazil’s midfield structure completely and totally failed the moment they lost possession. It ain’t great.
Brazil were a huge mess across the first two thirds of the pitch, but those superstars, oh, they’re really something. Vinícius Jr equalised with the best moment of individual quality in the tournament so far, the kind of move where he dribbles past players on the left and scores from a tight angle that feels like his signature goal. That was the best half of the World Cup yet. Morocco were doing a great job of exerting control on the game, looking really good in possession and pressing Brazil well. Brazil were a mess except in the moments when they weren’t. I had a great time.
After that, you could feel the gears shift as Morocco realised a draw was a decent result here. The second half got a lot slower and they pretty effectively shut Brazil down. The Seleção didn’t have a great way of forcing the issue once Morocco decided the fun was over. Ancelotti has always been good at finding solutions to problems like this on the fly, but he needs to get to work on that now, because the tactical setup we saw against Morocco isn’t good enough to win the World Cup. Something has to change.
Haiti 0-1 Scotland
It wasn’t great, but it was enough.