Five-time World Cup winners have their first foreign coach but it reconnects them to a tradition that made them great
On Friday, against Ecuador in Guayaquil, Carlo Ancelotti will become the first foreigner to take sole charge of Brazil. For any major country to turn to a foreign coach is always an admission of failure. Apart from England, the only other country to turn to a foreign coach after winning the World Cup is Uruguay, which has a population of 3.5 million, and they didn’t do so for half a century after last lifting the trophy (the Argentinians Daniel Passarella in 1999 until 2001 and Marcelo Bielsa from 2023 to today). But the truth is that Brazilian coaching has been in retreat for some time.
The situation is stark. The Brazilian league is by far the wealthiest in South America. Brazilian sides have won the past six Copas Libertadores, and have beaten other Brazilian sides in four of those six finals. Yet four of the past six Brazilian titles have been won by Portuguese coaches while Otto Glória, who led Benfica to the 1968 European Cup final, remains the only Brazilian to have been successful at elite club level in Europe.
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