Opinion – Tostão: France has a downside, being the reigning champions

I was at the stadium in two of Brazil’s World Cup victories. One, as an athlete, in 1970, and another, as a columnist, in 2002, in Japan. I also witnessed, in loco, several defeats, as in the 1966 World Cup, when I was still playing, and from 1994, in many world cups, as a commentator and columnist.

In the 2002 World Cup, as soon as the match was over, I ran to the press center, next to the stadium, to write my column, as I had little time to send it. He was thrilled with the achievement. I wrote: “Today I wanted to be just a fan, to have gone to the stadium walking, to watch the final in the middle of the crowd, shouting and applauding the players. restrained”.

Through thought and imagination, I travel in time. The three great forwards of PSG (Neymar, Messi and Mbappé) are the great protagonists of Brazil, Argentina and France, candidates for the title. France, who for many are the biggest favourites, have a downside, the fact that they are the reigning world champions. Only Italy, in 1934 and 1938, and Brazil, in 1958 and 1962, won two Cups in a row. Some champions were eliminated in the first phase, such as Brazil in 1966 and Germany in 2018.

The difficulty of repeating the conquest of the World Cup is not just a coincidence, circumstantial. Players who win a World Cup tend to have an unconscious accommodation, the feeling that they have already done their best and that they are already heroes. In addition, four years later, many no longer have the same technical and physical quality, although they are scaled by the achievements of the past.