Brazil’s early elimination from the World Cup had many causes. There were mistakes on the pitch, questionable choices by Carlo Ancelotti, a decisive performance by Erling Haaland and a Norway side organized and efficient enough to turn limited chances into advantage. But the humiliation in the round of 16 did not begin at kickoff. It closed an account left open since the end of Brazil’s last cycle. The long-awaited sixth star has arrived only as the number of World Cups Brazil has failed to win since 2002.
Why did Brazil fail to learn from the previous cycle? After Tite’s departure, the national team moved through a sequence of temporary fixes. There were interim managers, experiments, transition bets and changes of command. Ramon Menezes, Fernando Diniz, Dorival Júnior and Ancelotti each occupied, in different ways, a job that should have represented continuity. Instead, it became a symbol of instability.
The Brazilian Football Confederation, known as CBF, spent the period amid recurring crises, power struggles and changes of leadership. The national team had more owners than long-term project. A side that once represented the most sophisticated expression of Brazilian talent also became a mirror of its governance: too little institutional capital to organize the talent at its disposal.
That is the central point. Brazil did not lose because it stopped producing players. It may no longer produce Pelés, but it still develops a large number of athletes good enough for the world’s top leagues. Brazil lost because it continues to treat talent as a substitute for building a long-term collective project.
For decades, that bet worked. The national team enjoyed something close to a natural comparative advantage. Brazil produced exceptionally gifted players in extraordinary generations. Every Brazilian can recite the stars of 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002. That is what built the legend of the yellow shirt.
But global football has changed. Collective tactical play, physical preparation, technical drills, set-piece work, data analysis, squad management and discipline have narrowed the gap. Smaller countries may not have Brazil’s mythology, but they can now produce more coherent teams.
Norway provided the contrast. It did not beat Brazil by playing like Brazil. It won because it did not need to. Norway had a plan, understood its limits and maximized its main strength. Haaland barely touched the ball, but did what a great player in an efficient system is supposed to do: he decided the match when called upon.
In Brazil, the star player is still too often asked to compensate for the absence of a coordinated project. For years, that role belonged to Neymar. His talent is beyond dispute. But recent years had already shown that Neymar could no longer offer, with consistency, the physical condition and level of influence compatible with the emotional and tactical centrality Brazil continued to reserve for him. Bringing him back as a symbolic axis was a mistake. Part of the responsibility is his, for what he failed to deliver.
But it also belongs to the CBF, which preserved the culture of the name above the project, and to Ancelotti, who accepted operating within it. Ancelotti was hired to break that logic. Or he should have been. The Italian coach represented, in theory, the importation of European method: authority, hierarchy, experience and distance from local pressures. But he arrived late, after much of the cycle had already been consumed, and had little more than a year to organize a team managed by urgency. That is his mitigating factor. It is not his absolution. In his first major test, he did not break with the improvisation he was supposed to defeat.
This paradox goes beyond football. Brazil knows the logic of unconverted promise well. It has natural resources, a large consumer market, sophisticated companies, creative entrepreneurs, respected diplomacy, cultural influence and a rare capacity for reinvention. Yet it often wastes favorable cycles through lack of coordination, continuity, basic education and long-term execution.
No country has a permanent right to greatness. Not in football, not in economics, not in politics. Advantages need to be renewed. Brands need to be managed. Talent needs to be trained, protected, coordinated and placed at the service of a common idea.
That is the painful lesson. Ancelotti stays for the 2030 cycle. That gives the CBF a chance to prove its bet is serious. But the next cycle will only make sense if it starts from a simple premise: the institution must create the conditions for him to organize, choose, confront interests and build continuity.
Improvisation can be a virtue when it complements a project. When it replaces one, it becomes a habit — and one that is very hard to break.
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