Opinion – Renata Mendonça: CBF cannot spoil the best work of the women’s team in decades

Last Thursday (7), the women’s soccer team played its fourth game of the year. A friendly against Spain, one of the best teams in the world today – which even has the current best in the world, Alexia Putellas. The game ended 1-1 and, after that, Brazil’s coach, Pia Sundhage, gave a press conference.

There were three journalists at the press conference, all from independent vehicles. The coach analyzed the match, brought her point of view on some mistakes made by a completely renovated team full of young players. But there were no representatives of the mainstream media there.

This happened in the week when one of the most traditional newspapers in the country published the news: “Pia Sundhage has a threatened position in the women’s team after bad results and wrong call-ups”. And it is very symbolic that, on the day after the publication of this report, there was an important game of the women’s team – broadcast, even on open TV, accessible to all -, but only three journalists (from independent vehicles) were interested in what the coach had to say about the match.

Symbolic about how the mainstream media sees the women’s team – which has guaranteed space in the newspaper to “create controversy”, but does not arouse interest from the same editorial department of Sports to follow the processes. And also about how the CBF manipulates the press according to what suits it.

The same entity that didn’t care about the worst streak of results in the history of the women’s team on the eve of the 2019 World Cup (nine consecutive defeats), now apparently worries about losing a friendly tournament (in the penalty shootout, say -se) in the Swedish coach’s debut in August 2019. The confederation that spent decades neglecting women’s football now finds it absurd that the national team can’t beat France or the Netherlands – or even Spain –, countries that, unlike the Brazil, have invested a lot in women’s football in the last 10 years.

Faced with the chaos that lives behind the scenes on the eve of an election, it would be good for the top leadership of the CBF to worry about their political collusion and let those who really want to work for the development of football in Brazil do so.

Renovation

One must always remember that there are two stages to Pia Sundhage’s work in the women’s national team. First there was a short-term goal, the Tokyo Olympics. It was necessary to maintain the backbone of the team and assemble the most competitive team possible in a short time.

The post-Tokyo scenario is quite different. The objective, above all, is to renew the selection as never seen before. The three biggest pillars in the history of this team are no longer there – Cristiane had already been out of the Olympics, Formiga retired from the national team, Marta is injured.

If we look at the most difficult games of that period, first in the Tournament of France and now against Spain, Brazil had well-renovated lineups.

In the 1-1 draw against the Dutch, only three starting players were in Tokyo. Against the Spanish, there were four.

From previous generations, two “veterans” remained in this last call: Tamires and Debinha.

It’s not easy to fit in a team with so many changes, with so much youth. The process is painful until then. There will be more mistakes than successes in the games, because it’s a young team in the making. But you can see that there is work in progress. Younger players have evolved a lot.

It is a process, which may be slower than we would like to give results. But it’s necessary. We hope that Pia Sundhage has the peace of mind to work and complete a complete cycle in the Brazilian team.