Away fans and empty seats. An abiding image of the Centenario?
The five-time World Cup Champion released the names of the 23 soccer players who will represent Brazil in June.
Tite, 56 head coach of the Brazilian squad since June 2016, did not change much the team who will play the World Cup from the team that played the World Cup Qualifiers in August last year.
Check the list of players below
Goalkeepers: Alisson (Roma), Ederson (Manchester City), Cassio (Corinthians Sao Paulo)
Defenders: Miranda (Inter Milan), Marquinhos, Thiago Silva (both Paris Saint-Germain), Marcelo (Real Madrid), Filipe Luis (Atletico Madrid), Fagner (Corinthians), Pedro Geromel (Gremio), Danilo (Manchester City)
Midfielders: Casemiro (Real Madrid), Fernandinho (Manchester City), Paulinho (FC Barcelona), Renato Augusto (Beijing Guoan), Philippe Coutinho (FC Barcelona), Willian (Chelsea), Fred (Shakhtar Donetsk)
Forwards: Gabriel Jesus (Manchester City), Roberto Firmino (Liverpool), Douglas Costa (Juventus), Taison (Shakhtar Donetsk), Neymar (Paris Saint-Germain)
The new names and quite surprising names are the Shakhtar Donetsk, Taison and Fred (possibly a new Manchester United) forward and midfielders.
From those 23 players, 16 played on the sub-20 and sub-16 national teams, this shows that Brazil is paying attention to its own house, bringing players that have a history together, more like Germany did in preparation to the 2014 World Cup and its “Golden Generation”.
Brazil and Soccer
The British may have created soccer, but Brazil held for a long time the title of best in the world. Brazilians think of soccer 24/7, from children to grown men it is easy to see people playing “peladas” anywhere, just a ball and some improvised goals, in the middle of the street, parks, beaches, wherever you can play soccer.
For generations, Brazil thrived during world cups, had the best players. Does anyone remember the 1994 and 2002 squads, with Bebeto, Romario, Ronaldo, Cafu? Those are names that until today are in the memory of Brazilians.
But the 2018 World Cup has a different taste, not only because us (yes, including this Brazilian here) are still digesting the 7×1 we got from Germany in 2014, but because the country is happy with its political and economic situation.
Where Schools and business, usually, stop to see the national team play, the local population is not that interested. Data shows that 65% of Brazilians are not interested in the World Cup. Enildo Fernades, a public servant in Natal, Brazil says that differently from past World Cups, “This year for what I see the streets are not decorated, people are more interested in the ramifications of the “Operation car wash” than soccer. Cassia Monalisa, a professor at Universidade de Brasilia UnB) in Brasilia, comments the same “The climate [in Brazil]right now is not the one for a World Cup, people are more worried about the crises in the government than World Cup.”
