Brazil's Performance Is a National Disaster

By GRAHAME L. JONES

Aug. 14, 2001 12 AM PT

In Rio de Janeiro not long ago, an apparently wayward and confused penguin turned up on a beach, where it was described by lifeguards as “wobbling all over the place [and] on its last legs.”

Almost inevitably, they named it “Big Phil”--the same nickname conferred upon Luiz Felipe Scolari, Brazil’s latest in a long line of coaching disasters.

Scolari might not be on his last legs, but he very definitely is wobbling. So is all of Brazil, everyone from Fernando Henrique Cardoso, the nation’s president, to the lowliest shantytown dweller.

That’s because the four-time world champions are facing the unthinkable prospect of failing to qualify for the 2002 World Cup in Japan and South Korea.

Brazil--the home of Pele, if not soccer itself--is the only nation to have played in all 16 World Cup tournaments, since the first in Uruguay in 1930. It’s a record no country can equal or break.

But it might be ending soon.

With five qualifying games remaining, including a vital one Wednesday against Paraguay, the Brazilians are in real danger of not making it to Asia’s first World Cup.

They are fourth in their 10-nation qualifying group, behind Argentina, Paraguay and Ecuador and barely ahead of Uruguay on goal difference. The top four teams will qualify for Japan and Korea, the fifth-place finisher facing Australia in a two-game playoff for a spot in the World Cup.

Brazil needs to win at least three of its last five games to nail down a berth. But even that once-simple task is no longer a sure thing.

Until France ‘98, Brazil had lost only one World Cup qualifier in its history. But in the race for Korea-Japan ‘02, it already has lost three times--to Chile, Paraguay and Ecuador.

The country’s soccer fortunes have sunk so low, in fact, that last Thursday, Brazil--ranked second in the world--was reduced to using 112th-ranked Panama as a warm-up opponent after lowly Jamaica, Guatemala and Honduras all had declined invitations.

Even Panama ridiculed the game.

El Universal, a daily newspaper in Panama, said the Panamanian players “will on this occasion be laboratory rats, which the scientist Scolari will use to test possible antidotes that his team needs to emerge from the lethargy in which it is submerged.”

Still, the “laboratory rats” held the Brazilians to a 0-0 tie for more than an hour before finally succumbing, 5-0, in Curitiba, Brazil.

It was only Brazil’s fifth victory in 15 games this year.

While the once-proud Brazilian team has stumbled from one low point to another, its critics have enjoyed a field day.

One of the most acerbic is columnist Juca Kfouri of Lance, a Brazilian sports daily. When Scolari’s predecessor, Emerson Leao, was still in charge, Kfouri suggested Leao be replaced by Larri Passos, trainer of Gustavo Kuerten, Brazil’s French Open champion and the world’s No. 1-ranked tennis player.

“Larri Passos is responsible for the only Brazilian sportsman who brings happiness to his country in the 21st century,” Kfouri wrote.

“Admittedly, his pupil doesn’t play very well on grass, but neither do Leao’s and it’s not just a recent thing.”

Leao, Brazil’s World Cup goalkeeper in the 1970s, was the second of three coaches Brazil has employed in the last year and, amazingly, the country’s eighth national coach since 1990. A recent recap:

* Wanderley Luxemburgo was fired after Brazil lost to eventual gold medalist Cameroon at the Olympic Games in Sydney.

* Leao took over and lasted only nine months. After Brazil had been tied, 0-0, by both Canada and Japan and beaten, 1-0, by Australia at the FIFA Confederations Cup in June, an “ashamed” Leao was fired--not when he got home but at Tokyo airport as he waited to board a flight with his team.

* Big Phil--the coach, not the penguin--then took over, but with no greater success. In fact, things got worse.

In the wake of the scoreless tie with Japan, the Estado de Sao Paulo newspaper was scathingly sarcastic.

“We’ve done it,” the newspaper said. “We’ve managed to make ourselves equal to Japan.”

That, however, was nothing compared to the criticism voiced during Brazil’s disastrous Copa America campaign in Colombia last month.

Brazil was beaten, 1-0, by Mexico in its opener, its fourth consecutive loss. The last time that happened was in 1921.

But that defeat paled into insignificance when Honduras upset Brazil later in the tournament. Even the Associated Press, not known for its soccer savvy, was astounded and began its report:

“The Titanic, the Hindenburg, the Great Depression. Some people in Brazil believe the loss to Honduras ranks right up there with any modern-day disaster.”

If Leao was ashamed, Scolari was mortified.

“Write it down in your notebook, in the book of records,” he said. “I will be the coach who lost to Honduras. If it’s humiliating, shameful or ugly, put whatever adjectives you want. But we’re all hurting.”

Considering the way Brazil has been foundering since losing to France in the final of the 1998 World Cup, Nike must be wondering what all its money is buying. The American sports equipment company has a 10-year, $369-million sponsorship deal with Brazil’s national team, but the publicity has been all bad.

The problem, as the media, former national team players and former national coaches see it, is the Brazilian soccer federation (the CBF), headed by the arrogant and ineffective Ricardo Teixeira, son-in-law of former FIFA president Joao Havelange.

“The national team is a reflection of the incompetent directors who run Brazilian football,” former national team captain Zico said.

Wrote former Brazilian World Cup player Gerson, now a Lance columnist: “The biggest culprit for our recent failures is the CBF, which organizes Brazilian football badly and lets the national team take part in meaningless tournaments.”

Brazilian soccer at the club level is beset by falling attendance, abysmal administration and charges of widespread corruption that have brought about two government investigations into the way the sport is run.

Such is the backdrop to the national team’s calamitous decline.

Socrates, the elegant midfielder from Brazil’s 1982 World Cup team, is campaigning against watching the national team on Brazilian television.

His reasoning is convoluted but sound.

If ratings drop precipitously on the Globo network, Socrates maintains, the network will have the clout and the impetus to bring about change in the CBF leadership.

“If we destroy Globo’s audience, [the network] will start losing money,” he said. “Then they will pressure the leaders of Brazilian football to make changes. What [Globo] can do is to get rid of the guys who are there and bring in more competent people.”

Romario, who led Brazil to its 1994 World Cup triumph in the United States, said the country has to buckle down and stop looking to the past. “No one player can save the team,” he said. “There’s no point talking about the phenomenal players of the past and those that might emerge in the future.”

That has not stopped others from bemoaning the current team’s performance.

“Even worse than playing badly is seeing the team play without creativity and daring, which have always been the strong point of Brazilian football,” Zico said.

Cardoso, Brazil’s president, has called upon the national team coaches and players “to make our football once again worthy of its traditions.”

Easier said than done.

After Wednesday’s game against Paraguay in Sao Paulo, Brazil plays Argentina in Buenos Aires on Sept. 5, and the Argentines would like nothing better than to further embarrass their longtime rival.

When Brazil lost to Honduras in the Copa America--a tournament shunned by Argentina--Argentina’s sports newspaper, Ole, gleefully commented, “Brazil didn’t turn up, either. At least we told people we weren’t going.”

Poking fun at the four-time World Cup winners has become a popular pastime in South America.

Scolari, however, remains unperturbed.

“We will qualify for the World Cup,” he said. “It may not be pretty, but we will qualify.”

(BEGIN TEXT OF INFOBOX / INFOGRAPHIC)

FIFA Rankings

As of July 18 . The next rankings will be published Aug. 22.

Ranking Points

1. France 810

2. Brazil 795

3. Argentina 764

4. Italy 735

5. Germany 726