On the first anniversary of the 7-1 World Cup hammering by Germany, coach Dunga says that Brazil face a hard climb back from an epic humiliation that provoked nationwide soul-searching.
“We all have to improve,” he said in comments on the Globo Esporte sports news Web site. “We need the humility to know that we have to work to recover that dominance of world football, but we also have to admit that it’s not that easy.”
Dunga was speaking late on Monday after meeting former national team trainers for a post-mortem on Brazil’s most recent fiasco — shock elimination from the Copa America last month at the hands of minnows Paraguay.
However, the real hurt for soccer-mad Brazil dates back a year yesterday, when the national side collapsed in the semi-final of the World Cup it was hosting and had been under huge pressure to win.
Instead, Germany went on to claim the crown previously held by Brazil five times — a record achievement that has helped raise soccer from mere passion in the country of 200 million to something at the core of the nation’s soul.
Dunga put the loss on July 8, last year on a par with Brazil’s 1950 World Cup final defeat to lowly Uruguay in Rio’s grand Maracana. That event was so traumatizing for the all-confident Brazilians that it is still talked about and even has its own name — “the Maracanazo.”
The Germany calamity “is a date that will leave a mark, just like 1950, and just like the five times that Brazil were world champions,” he said.
Even if Brazil’s yellow-shirted players were once synonymous with talent and winning ways, Dunga says fans must get used to a less glamorous reality.
“We have to see the positive side. We can’t always win,” he said. “We have to try to go forward in every way we can.”
Just how to do that is something that Dunga — a World Cup winner — and the Rio brain trust of former soccer luminaries are trying to work out.
“We have to rediscover the identity of our football, starting with bottom club divisions, which are really responsible for forming players,” the Brazilian Football Confederation said in a statement.
The rot in Brazil’s famous jogo bonito, or “beautiful game” was exposed during last month’s quarter-final flop at the South American championship, the Copa America, in Chile.
Dunga blamed a virus that he said had sickened 15 members of the squad, even if not all players seemed to agree this was true.
The real soccer sickness, most analysts say, was the absence of creativity in a once-glittering team and over-reliance on one of their few world-class stars, Neymar, who was sent off against Colombia after headbutting an opposing player.
One fierce critic is 2002 World Cup winner Rivaldo, who says: “If we don’t have serious people in charge of Brazilian football, a long time will go by without becoming champions.”
Another former international, Cafu, said Brazil’s opponents “have lost respect... They no longer fear us.”
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