The captain of the 1994 World Cup winners again became the head coach of the Brazilian national team

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The first match after the return of Dunga (pictured) to the post of head coach, the Brazilian national team will play on September 5 against the Colombian team
Photo: Andre Penner, AP

The Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) held a presentation of the new head coach of the national team. As expected, the post left vacant after the departure of Luis Filipe Scolari was filled by 50-year-old Dunga, who took over the national team for the second time. Compared to 2010, the coach’s problems have only increased.

The fact that Dunga would lead the Brazilian national team was known in advance - the authoritative publication O Globo reported this the day before. His candidacy was lobbied by both the current and future presidents of the CBF, Jose Maria Marin and Marco Polo del Nero, as well as the new general manager of the Brazilian national team, Gilmar Rinaldi, who is friends with Dunga. “Dunga is our common choice. He has everything to lead the team. He was not just a world champion. He was the captain of the team that won the championship in 1994,” introduced the new head coach of the Brazilian national team, Jose Maria Marin.

Dunga's presentation took place in Rio de Janeiro, the city that hosted the World Cup final less than two weeks ago, which was marked by a resounding failure for the tournament hosts. There, the Brazilians suffered the biggest defeat in history (in the semi-finals they were swept away by the German team 7:1) and were left without even a consolation prize: in the bronze medal match they lost to the Dutch 0:3. It was these two painful defeats that determined the fate of Luiz Felipe Scolari, one of the most authoritative and titled Brazilian coaches, who in 2002 led the national team to its last world championship title.

Having made a choice in favor of Dunga (the party of supporters of the European specialist lost in the behind-the-scenes struggle), the CBF followed the beaten path: as in the case of Scolari, Dunga accepted the national team for the second time. He already led the Brazilians from 2006 to 2010, and that work was his coaching debut. Everything started promisingly: in 2007, the Brazilian team won the America's Cup, and in 2009, the Confederations Cup, which preceded the main tournament of the four years - the World Cup.

Dunga's team from the world championship in South Africa and Scolari's 2014 team actually have a lot in common. A similar tournament path, in which there were no high-profile victories and truly outstanding matches, a playing style that was more cautious and tight than the one that Brazilian fans are used to seeing, and a selection of players. The difference is that Dunga left quietly, modestly - 1:2 - losing to the Dutch in the quarterfinals, while Scolari failed miserably.

The collapse of the Brazilian national team at the home World Cup pointed to systemic errors that Dunga will have to deal with. It turned out that local football players are physically weaker, less tactically savvy and not as demanding of themselves as the Europeans - when Neymar, perhaps the only Brazilian hope, speaks about these gaps, one cannot help but believe him. Players of some roles that were previously considered the calling card of the Brazilian national team (for example, scoring center forward) have completely disappeared. In 2010, Dunga had the low-key Luis Fabiano at the forefront of the attack, and in 2014, Scolari had Fred, whom the fans almost officially recognized as the main culprit of the failures.

Dunga, it seems, already understands what a heap of problems he has to sort out. "I'm not here to dream. We have to get to work quickly. Football has changed a lot and continues to change every day. Attacking football, as fans understand it, is not four or five players separated from the team and acting in attack. On At the World Cup, we saw how everyone played very compactly, without gaps between the lines,” said Dunga, very accurately pointing out the weaknesses due to which the Brazilian national team was crushed. The first conclusions about Dunga’s work can be drawn very soon: on September 5, the Brazilians will play a friendly match against the brilliant Colombian national team.

Petr Kuznetsov

Dunga entered the same team twice