Opinion – Tostão: Presences and absences in the national team call-up make us reflect

There is almost a consensus that Palmeiras is the Brazilian team that has the best counterattack and the best transition from defense to attack. They are different situations. The counterattack begins with the recovery of the ball, which can be anywhere on the field, even close to the opponent’s goal. The offensive transition is the transition from defense to offense.

On Monday (7), we will meet the 26 Brazilian players who are going to the World Cup. There are about 20 certain ones, which everyone knows who they are. Who will be called up to the right side, Daniel Alves, who has been training at Barcelona B, or will Tite prefer to call up a fifth defender, leaving Militão in Danilo’s reserve? There are several defenders of the same level, to fill the fourth and perhaps fifth spots. Pedro is almost certain in the attack. Martinelli and Firmino run outside. Everton Ribeiro or Coutinho? Or will the two go to the Cup?

For Danilo’s reserve, a surprise could be Filipe Luís in place of Alex Telles. They say that Filipe Luís, who has already been invited by Tite to talk at the CBF, if he is not called up to play, he will be called to be part of the coaching staff. I digress, I suspect, without having any information, that, after the World Cup, Tite and Dorival Júnior will change places and that Filipe Luís will be Dorival Júnior’s assistant.

I was called up twice for a World Cup. In 1966, 44 players were initially called up. The layoffs were progressive. We traveled to Sweden to spend 15 to 20 days training and playing friendlies before the Cup. Several would have to be dismissed before the trip to England.

I, in a mixture of enormous distraction, arrogance and technical evidence, as I was Pelé’s reserve, asked supervisor Carlos Nascimento, a rigid and few-worded man, on the eve of the call-up, about the timetable for the trip to England. . He looked at me hard and was silent. Did not sleep at night, afraid and not go because of my faux pas. The other day, it was on the list.

Brazil was eliminated in the first phase of the 1966 World Cup because they did not form a team, because there were several players who shone in the 1958 and 1962 World Cups and who were no longer in good conditions to play and because they faced two strong teams, Portugal and Hungary.

After the 1969 Playoffs, I had to travel to the United States to have my left eye operated on. There was a big doubt and a lot of discussions if I would be able to play in the World Cup and if I would continue playing football. Coach João Saldanha went to the airport in Rio de Janeiro to say goodbye to me and, in his libertarian way, told journalists that he would wait for me until minutes before the first game of the World Cup. I felt important. I was the first to be called up to the Worlds.

When remembering the presences and absences in a World Cup, I think, I associate, that, even in the good moments of the life, there is always an absence, a lack of something that completes us, the great happiness, the impossible dream. It is the eternal dissatisfaction of the human being.

“Ausência” is one of the poems I like best by the greatest poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, who would turn 120 this week. “For a long time, I thought absence is a lack. And I regretted, ignorantly, the lack. Today, I don’t regret it. There is no lack in absence. Absence is a being in me. And I feel it so close, snuggled in my arms , who laugh, dance and invent happy exclamations, because absence, this assimilated absence, no one steals from me anymore.”