Topic: FIFA World Cup 2026 :Canada/Mexico/United States: Discussion Thread - page 105. (Read 62863 times)

You keep telling some crazy stories, how old are you? Read Rooney's memoirs about how he spent his leisure time: “If I had a free day, I locked myself in the room and drank.”  And Rooney was no exception, alcohol was a huge problem for football players. Do you think this is a professional approach to business? Why do you think modern players play longer and better than previous generations who were just recently? Not only because medicine is better now (although this is also one of the reasons), but because if you now violate the sports regime, you will simply be kicked out of the team or, for starters, deprived of the millions that are due to you under the contract. To drink and be unpunished you have to be at least Neymar.
As for showing off, it in no way cancels out human nature, but once again confirms that now football players are under stricter conditions and are forced to be more professional in all areas of life.

The Carlo Anceloti to Brazil coaching was a big bait, i dont know from where, if from the proper circle of Anceloti or from the Brazilian federation of football, but ended up being a clown show.

I can think some words from the Anceloti representative to pressure Real Madrid, but i really dont know what really happen.

How can people have always been the same if there is more ostentation nowadays, like you said above? If people are more ostentatious nowadays, consequently they aren't the same compared to previous times...

Human's nature has always been the same, although behavior patterns change depending the current moment and external influences. Right now we have an important phenomenon we didn't have in previous decades, at least with so much influence and contact with the masses: the internet. It has totally reshaped the tendencies, interests and behaviors of society, including soccer players, who are more like celebrities than anything else right now.

These players have never been moral standards on building a family and walking straight in life, but they did their jobs with excellency. However, now with internet they are more concerned about boasting a luxurious routine at parties, wearing fancy clothes, displaying a new hairstyle each new day, displaying how influent and connected they are with the world of celebrities in order to collect most likes, comments, shares and fans as possible.

On the other hand, in previous times, players did enjoy parties and messing around, but they didn't have the need of being idolized for that by the public. They had the conscience of having a responsability and a performance to be delivered to the nation. Nowadays, it looks like players don't care at all. If the game is lost, at least they will receive some million likes on social media crying in a picture, while receiving another million dollars from sponsor brands.

They studied the possibility of hiring an european coach (Carlo Ancelotti from Real Madrid) for the national team, although decided recently for Dorival Jr., who has already worked previously with Flamengo and São Paulo. It looks like they have some resistance in picking someone who is not a brazilian to command the team. Brazilian players do have impressive skills, but don't have discipline and start losing self-confidence the further the championship reaches.

I feel Brazil will not have a good time in the Copa America or the World Cup with the current situation they have because they prefer to stick to their plan and use only the Brazilian coaches which can damage the team because they could have much better options for their team.
Traditions can definitely damage Brazil because they have many younger players and good talents in this country but these young players need better coaching to give them a better plan.

  Yes, yes, and the grass was greener and the trees were taller. Remember how many children Ronaldo has (from different women) and why he had a vasetomy. You can also remember that Ronaldinho openly lived with two women at the same time. If I'm not mistaken, modern players don't allow themselves to do this, not even close.
All this is nonsense, people are always the same and now the pressure from society is stronger than before, so at least there is more ostentatious “correctness”.
As for Brazil, now no team in the world (even the French) has such a strong generation of players to dominate as it was in those days, so there is a lot of confusion about randomness - the tournaments are short + - equal and many of the teams can win. Therefore, I see no reason to blame Brazil for anything, the only thing they are ossified about is that they do not hire Europeans. This is a serious mistake. A good European coach could achieve results with them.

Soccer is one of the most popular practices in Brazil. The government actually uses it on their favour by promoting the sport and investing on it. In 2014's brazilian World Cup, the government invested above 30 billion reais (about 6$ billion dollars) in infrastructure, services, support and other expenses for the international event execution. That is a lot of money, especially when considering the precariety the country faces in health sector.

Moreover, soccer is the main activity practiced since an early age at schools, at home and at spare time of the children. At gym's lessons, students mostly play soccer all the time... So as you can see there is huge investment and encouragement to the activity. To be a successful player is the dream of most young male children around the country.

How to explain the bad performance, then? Well, I think it has something to do with exccess of individuality. Everyone wants to be the most shining star in the sky, so they don't play collectively anymore, as a team is supposed to work, where each player knows its functions and stick to it, besides the focus of the players not being entirely on their jobs anymore, as there are tons of distractions calling for them outside the fields. Fame, parties, women...

For players who usually have come from the bottom classes of society, such distractions are highly tempting and might be fatal. It's a new world they belong, which they have never had access before. So they want to enjoy it the maximum as possible, and the focus on the career gets compromised.

Yeah, I don't think you can really compare those competitions.

A country usually don't send the same players to Copa America compared to the World Cup.

Also the players play very differently.

We'll have to see what Brazil does though.

It's a shame if it's true as you say. To be honest, I don't know the Brazilian national team players this time. I don't know many of their names. From what I read some of the previous comments that Brazil is in bad shape. They seem to have lost a star player and are only left with players with average quality by the standards of the Brazilian players we know.

I think Patriotism is not an issue for now. But they have lost the quality of their players. I don't know why that happened. Is it because there is no support from the Brazilian government for their football? To be honest, I used to know several clubs in Brazil such as Flamengo, Santos, Internacional and Sao Paolo. That's because they often appear in the inter-club world cup. And that can prove the quality of the Brazilian national team because I'm sure many of the players in the Brazilian league are Brazilian players because it seems impossible for European star players to decide to play in the Brazilian league.

Let's see how Brazil is going to perform on Copa America, so we can have a better understanding on what we can expect from the national team on the World Cup of 2026. Personally, I don't think they have great chances to impress anymore, like they used to do during the early 2000's and 90's decade. The new generation of players haven't been following the same pattern of the old ones which brought great achievements for Brazilian soccer.

It seems a long before players were more concerned about patriotism, while now they seek for fame, money, parties, women and trouble with the justice... So, all these aspects reflect on their final performance inside the fields. The commitment isn't the same when compared to players from another nations, which are heavily focused in bringing the title to their people.

The Copa America will start in mid June 2024, I think with the appointment of Dorival Junior as their definitive coach, things will get better. There is hope that Brazil will be able to compete with teams like Argentinta in this competition, and for World Cup qualification they also still have a big opportunity to improve their performance. Neymar is likely to be available again when the Copa America rolls around, and that will certainly make Brazil bargaining chip even better. To be honest, Brazil doesn't lack quality players, in my opinion they just lack a good coach.

Indeed, I have to admit that Brazil is no longer the favorite, but their reputation and big name can still shake their opponents a little. Especially for the World Cup, now teams from Europe are even more favored, such as France, Germany, Spain and several other teams, and I think this is very understandable. Personally, I still believe that Brazil will improve themselves in the future, so that they can realize their dream of winning the Copa America trophy.

On the other hand, in the Copa America Brazil is in group D with Colombia, Paraguay and another person is still waiting for the qualifying results, in my opinion it is a tough group, but I am sure Brazil can qualify with the status of group winners.

I prefer to say he is one of the best players who can last for a decade or more. I agree that saying he was the best player in a whole decade is an exaggeration, I mean many other players also played well during that decade, one of them is Cristiano Ronaldo, so it's more accurate to just say one of the best players.
He has got it all now, most recently he was able to win the World Cup title which is a complement to everything he has achieved and the most was when he was at Barcelona. One thing that many people say is Messi's weakness, yes, many of them say that Messi is only good at playing at one club, namely Barcelona, while for other clubs he cannot meet the expectations placed on him. But that's just a difference of perspective in my opinion.

Been the best player for over a decade? I would say that you exaggerated 10 times, but I’m not at all sure that there was a year in which Messi was the best. Messi is a PR project that stole all the achievements of such players as Iniesta, Xavi, Busquets, Puyol, etc.
And it’s always funny for me to read how Messi fanboys praise him for something (for example the World Cup) but in the case of other players (for example Mbappe, Iniesta, Xavi, etc.) these same achievements are suddenly not so important 

  There it is, I forgot to add that smiley face when I posted, it was simply a joke.

Of course Messi just wanted to win the world cup at any time, just happened to get it after Maradona passed away.

I still believe most people in Argentina prefer Maradona over Messi.

Maybe it's because it was older, it has a bit more of mystery than current times where everything is recorded.

As for the first part of your post, it is complete nonsense and I would like to ask you to explain how you happened to know that. Maybe you got some email back and forth with Messi.

As for the second part of your post, that is your opinion and I respect that. I disagree with you and yet there is no right or wrong, which is quite cool.

I think Messi is the greatest of all time, but then again it might be easier these days to judge like that because we have all these fancy Youtube videos and a million angles preparing the games in the most spectacular ways.

Mbappe doesn't have power like Messi and he can be an effective player like he is in Argentina. Mbappe was always playing in PSG where there were not many good players like other teams and On the other hand in the French League you can't find many superstar players while Messi won everything while he was racing with other high-quality players and that's why Mbappe couldn't help his team like Messi did in the last world cup.

I think he was waiting until Maradona was not with us any more to become the world champion.

In my eyes Messi will never be as big as Maradona, which by the way is sometimes compared to god in Argentina, they refer to him as D10S (god in Spanish spelt with his shirt number, ten).

Messi's timing to win that trophy was amazing, but thinking about how all played out for him, it has something special in my opinion. Being in the uncertain for so long, not knowing if he will ever achieve his big dream and then in this World Cup he takes it home. It was an enormous triumph for him. And now everybody wants to know whether he will be going for another World Cup. But I think he would be less stressed. He could be able to show some magical moments without the pressure of making any mistakes.

There are even music concerts in the stadium hehe
I have two observations:
1 - it is not certain yet that the stadium will have a capacity of 100,000 people, it will depend on the renovation of the stadium, but there is a possibility yes. It depends on FIFA too, but knowing the Americans and FIFA's current moment where they want to make entertainment, I'd bet they'll try to get as many people as possible to put on a mega-show for the world

2 - the acoustics could be favorable, because can you imagine a major final involving Brazil or Argentina, for example, with thousands of people singing and helping their team?
I don't know about the players, whether that helps or not 


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Messi literally got the world cup trophy when he was almost getting pass the peak of his career but then it has become more valuable to him because he knew how long he had to stay before he was able to get hold of the trophy, a player like Ronaldo who isn't privilege to get hold of the world cup his entire career would understand better.

Mbappe well may understand the worth of the trophy he won at a very young age even if it may seem like he doesn't and I'm sure he at no point see it any less. Now mbappe is wanting to win other elite trophies such as the champions league which has been one of the reasons he's been making attempt for moves away from PSG so that he will further increase his chances of winning the champions league in any team he will be willing to go to after he must have left PSG.

I think it will take a long time for Brazil to return to its best form and become one of the powers of world football. If you say they are doing well then that's true but if you say they are the favorites to win then I think we need to take Brazil out of the favorites for the next few years. I have liked Brazil since the Ronaldo era and have watched them since the 2002 world cup. They were favorites to win several world cups but since losing 1-7 to Germany in the 2014 world cup, I saw that in the 2018 and 2022 world cups they have experienced a decline in performance. and quality to this day.