Brazil's footballing rivalry with Chile is generally a friendly enough affair but the stakes are high this weekend and a note of tension crept in ahead of the meeting between the two sides in Belo Horizonte when the local side's press officer reacted somewhat angrily to suggests from the opposition camp that match referee might again end up deciding the contest in favour of the hosts.
"We'll talk about it only once," said the Brazilian federation's Rodrigo Paiva firmly, after quickly stepping in when a Chilean journalist had brought up comments made over the last few days by star striker Alexis Sanchez amongst others. "It's something that's immature, this kind of pressure is ridiculous. Talking about this is not a lack of respect to Fifa or the referee or the people who work here with 100 years of winning history, it's a lack of respect to the Brazilian people. We don't need a referee to win a match; it's insulting. That's all the CBF is going to say on the matter."
Some Irish context for this sort of thing is provided by Giovanni Trapattoni who prior to the World Cup play-off away leg against France in 2009 took what seemed at the time to be the unusual step of suggesting that the referee would need to be strong. Well, we all know how that worked out for him.
It’s not hard, in any case, to understand Sanchez’s point on this occasion for the Brazilians have not found themselves on the wrong side of too many bad calls so far in the competition but Paiva’s put down about “100 years of winning history,” is pretty damning.
The hosts at this World Cup have won the competition five times while their guests have never got beyond the semi-finals and the one occasion on which they got that far was way back in 1962 when they were themselves playing on home soil and, somewhat inevitably, the Brazilians who beat them on the way to title number two.
Their head to head record is discouraging too with the outsiders today having failed to beat their rivals in 12 attempts since the year 2000 and despite the regularity with which the two teams meet, they have never beaten them on Brazilian soil.
Scolari was dismissive enough about the significance of the record when asked about it yesterday: “The statistical data, it is only good for you (the media). This is not the team that played in ‘62 or ‘80; this is the team of 2014. They are now considered one of the best teams in this tournament so far so we’ve to be careful because it’s a dangerous team. It’s football, you never know who will win based on statistics but if you must look at them then we played here (in Belo Horizonte last year in a friendly) and it was 2-2, we played there and it was 2-1. So it’s very close I would say.”
Chile’s coach, Jorge Sampaoli, is an Argentine and so is not overly concerned by the historical record even if, he admits, “it is not an accident”. Whenever history was mentioned last night he simply said that he sees this as an opportunity for Chile to make some. He is, however, deeply respectful of Brazil’s collective ability and steered well of the refereeing stuff controversy.
That his own side is also dangerous is abundantly clear with the friendlies against England and Germany during the season just ended giving an idea of they were capable of before Spain suffered as the team delivered on that potential 10 days ago.
Sampaoli is handicapped going into the game by the likely absence injury of Gary Medel and, more significantly, the ongoing battle with a knee problem being fought by Juventus’s Arturo Vidal. The latter is likely to feature though mainly due to his importance with the coach admitting yesterday that if the match had been then he wouldn’t have made it. As it is, he suggested, “he may not play 90 minutes but he is important to us, he is a symbol.”
Much may depend on how the respective teams' star strikers perform with Brazil likely to be in a commanding position in the event that Neymar eclipses his Barcelona team mate Alexis Sanchez and Vidal's role in preventing him from doing that with be important.
Sampaoli said the plan is for his players to be “very close” to the Brazilian star whenever he gets the ball and his players would do well to stick with that. The 27 year-old provides not just know how but leadership and his lack of fitness, which stretches back to the before the end of the club season, is a major concern.
His side’s ability to hit their hosts on the counter attack will be vital and if they can reproduce the sort of form they showed against the defending champions then they must be in with a shout.
Scolari was actually philosophical enough about the prospect of his side losing in the event that Chile are actually better on the day, far more so one suspects, than the nation’s fans will be if it actually comes to pass but he insisted Brazil with do their own thing “We’ll put pressure and defend. That’s all. We are going to set up our team based on the way we play the game regardless of what Chile we’ll offer.”
The coach said that so far Brazil have reached about “80 per cent” of the level they were at for the Confederations Cup. If he replaces Paulinho with Fernandinho, as he expected to do, then that may edge a little closer to where they want to be.
Generally, he looked confident. If Brazil are ultimately to win this tournament then there may yet be an element of Neymar having to drag them to victory in the way Garrincha did 62 years ago. But history is clear about one thing: they can’t lose to Chile, can they?
