Opinion – Tostão: Vítor Pereira is experiencing difficulties encountered by Parreira in 2006

I learned in medicine and psychoanalysis that we shouldn’t transfer what’s in the books to all patients. These, with the same disease, are different. The symptoms of each must be compared with what is in the books. It is the patient who needs to be treated, not the disease.

The same is true in life. The lived experiences, which seem identical, are different in each era. Because it is easier and safer, human beings tend to repeat behaviors, as if the moments were the same. In football, it’s similar. Each game has its details, its history, and must be seen and conducted in different ways.

The dream of many coaches and analysts, extremely rational, even without admitting it, is to make football a purely scientific, technical, tactical, programmed, rehearsed and calculated sport. Surprise, subjective details and the imponderable would have no importance.

The football that I saw and experienced, in different times, has different expressions. In short, in the 1960s and 1970s, there was a fascination with the freer, more invented, more fanciful game. Brazilian artists and craftsmen were worshiped all over the world. Then, progressively, especially in the 1980s and 1990s, football became more scientific, planned, utilitarian, physical, with few individualistic reveries. It also got uglier and more predictable.

After the 2002 World Cup, there was a transformation, which continues today, for the better. A union was built between the two previous eras, a mixture of pragmatism, improvisation and inventiveness. The game has become more intense, more exciting, more beautiful, more technical and tactical.

Discussions about what is more important, performance or result, beauty or efficiency, also increased. Both visions are essential and necessary. In the future, which has already arrived, the teams alternate different strategies in each game and even in the same match, according to the moment.

In all these periods, the stars were always present. They are the ones who embellish football. But it is not easy to join them in the same team. Before the 2006 World Cup, the good and pragmatic coach Parreira said that adding Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Kaká and Adriano would be the limit of boldness. Parreira tried to position the stars in a different way, and it didn’t work. I imagine that the coach’s dream would be to manage a team with fewer stars and more predictable.

Vítor Pereira goes through something similar at Flamengo. He would like to have players on both sides who score and attack, as he demanded that Róger Guedes play for Corinthians, but he knows he cannot give up the best and climb together Everton Ribeiro, Arrascaeta, Gabigol and Pedro.

Whatever the scheme he will use in the Club World Cup, the coach will be heavily criticized if the team is not champion. As he is at the beginning of his work, Vítor Pereira still lacks the definition and confidence that Abel Ferreira has at Palmeiras.

The past is always together with the present. There is a nostalgia, a tendency to think that everything in the past was better. The genius Woody Allen, in the film “Midnight in Paris”, showed how the affective memory of what was lived or imagined is more pleasant for most people than the present. The human being is always dissatisfied with the current situation.

“Life must be lived looking forward, but life can only be understood by looking backwards.” (Kierkegaard, Danish philosopher)