Lost opportunity for Brazil

And there goes Brazil - knocked out of the World Cup at the quarter final stage. Which is a shame as I really thought that they had a good chance of winning it this year.

The strengths of this years Brazil team, as I saw it, were:
1) Good (but not great) defence
2) Great technical ability
3) Great counter-attacking speed and ability

Those three qualities put together are a dangerous combination. If you play counter-attacking football against them, then Brazil would simply sit back and pass the ball around while patiently probing your defence for a weakness. And with the technical quality of the Brazil squad, they were comfortable in keeping the ball and you could almost guarantee that they would eventually score.

On the other hand, if you attacked, their defence was good enough that they weren't easy to score against. Add in their ability to turn defence into attack at the drop of a coin and there was a real risk that you would leave space for Brazil to score.

In short, despite the scorn leveled against Dunga's style by Brazilian media, I thought they had the right way of playing to win. And, in fact, if you look at the way the game against Holland was shaping up, this was exactly what happened initially. Brazil were controlling the game and Holland found it difficult to get hold of the ball.

Unfortunately, it appears that there were two critical weaknesses in the Brazil squad. Firstly, the mentality appears a weakness as the squad seemed to fall apart after Melo's own goal.

The other weakness appears to be squad depth. Late in the game, when Brazil were a goal down, you looked at the bench and realised that Dunga didn't have any options in terms of bringing someone on to change the game. As it was, with Holland continuing to attack, they almost fell victim to Brazil on the counter.

All in all, I think this goes down as a lost opportunity for Brazil to win their sixth World Cup. Still, all credit to Holland for fighting to the end and winning.