Opinion – Sandro Macedo: To maintain consistency, Tite makes incoherent comments

Work is open for the Brazilian team in the year of the World Cup in Qatar, to be played at the end of this year. Tite made this Thursday his first call in 2022 – and the first press conference –, and it is clear that the chance of new names emerging is less and less, not to say nil.

“There’s no closed box”, said Tite, in the best pre-college teacher style, wanting to say that everyone still has a chance. But then… no, no.

In a call-up for games against Ecuador and Paraguay – which are only valid for Ecuador and Paraguay –, the big “surprise” was the return of Daniel Alves to the side, after re-launching about ten days ago at Barcelona.

To maintain his consistency, Tite sometimes makes incoherent comments. He likes to say that the moment is decisive, but if football is the moment, it is not the moment for Dani Alves – although he may be the best option until the end of the year, given the low competition in the position.

And if it’s not Dani Alves’ moment, what about Philippe Coutinho? No one has been as “opportunized” as Coutinho, and it’s been a while —”opportunize” is one of the coaching staff’s favorite verbs, which explains why Sylvinho, who worked with Tite and is now at Corinthians, also has a habit of “opportunizing” .

Tite knows everything that little Couto, one of Brazil’s best players in the Russian Cup, can deliver to the national team. And you know everything he hasn’t delivered in a long time, to any team. If there’s a coach capable of recovering him and leaving him in the cracks to play in the World Cup, it’s not Tite, but Steven Gerrard, his former teammate from Liverpool — where the Brazilian played his best football — and current Aston Villa coach, who just signed Coutinho on loan.

If the young man revealed by Vasco returns to play well under Gerrard’s baton, he will be fit for the selection. Before, it shouldn’t.

Thus, Tite missed a good chance to test, for example, Raphael Veiga, who spent a much better season for Palmeiras than Coutinho at Barcelona or Everton Ribeiro at Flamengo. But if Veiga has not come now, it is unlikely that he will appear in the next ones.

Saying that you didn’t call someone who didn’t show up at the club or that you’re not training is an excuse. If someone from Tite’s commission got in touch with Veiga and asked him to get in shape at the end of the year, the Palmeiras midfielder would even dispense with the French toast.

And Dani Alves back is just the receipt that we are in crisis on the wings, a position in which we spent decades with the best in the world —Jorginho, Cafu and Dani Alves himself on one side; Leonardo, Roberto Carlos and Marcelo on the other. It is even possible that Tite will give up four full-backs in the Cup… maybe for another striker or midfielder.

Atletico Madrid’s Renan Lodi, on the other hand, may have missed the Cup due to a vaccine. His only partial immunization was not well explained: he was a denialist and only got the vaccine now because the club —or the selection— forced him? Why didn’t you get immunized earlier? In fact, Tite took advantage of the press conference to say that taking the vaccine is a “social responsibility”. And maybe at that time the past weighs against it. In Lodi’s case, the failure in the Copa América final against Argentina, which resulted in Di María’s title goal.

If the box with the names that Tite will take to Qatar is not closed, it seems that it has very few openings.