Brazil has odds of 5.13 to win the next World Cup. Here’s why I disagree!

Brazil is a complicated selection. They have their struggles. Together with Argentina, the two South American giants are sort of isolated from the global calendar of international selections between each World Cup.

They don’t have true opposition in the CONMEBOL universe. The recent titles of Chile at Copa América can be explained by the lousy performances of Brazil and Argentina and some merits of Chile. But if you consider that Chile didn’t even qualify for this World Cup, you can see the teams are the only protagonists.

Actual Games: Something Brazil and Argentina Lack

The Brazilians and the Argentines spend way too much time without proper opposition. The last friendlies of Brazil before the World Cup were against Ghana and Tunisia. These teams can hardly prepare Brazil to play against Germany, England, or France. Or even Belgium, the team that beat Brazil in the last World Cup’s round of 16.

It’s fair to say the last real game of Brazil was the Final of the 2021 Copa América against Argentina. And they lost.

I know Brazil has shining stars like Raphinha and Vini Jr, and even Neymar in top form. But history has proved that teams win games and not players on their own. Belgium is a great example of this phenomenon!

Comparing the odds of Brazil and Argentina

Brazil now has odds of 5.13 on average, while Argentina has odds of 7.79. The outright markets naturally have big odds. Even minor differences in the percentages calculated that will determine the odds will cause major differences between teams. But I still can’t see why Brazil has that much advantage in comparison with Argentina.

Even Belgium, in spite of the moment they are living, could hardly be considered that unlikely to win the World Cup with odds of 17.58!

The Reason Behind My Criticism

I’ve been following the career of Brazil’s coach since I was a child. He managed one of the teams in my town, Porto Alegre, in 2001 when he consolidated his career as a professional coach with the title of Grêmio in the 2001 Brazil Cup.

During his last job before the selection of Brazil, at Corinthians, he proved to be a great coach, with a deep focus on training and repetition of tactics behind closed doors so that players could be ready for the games.

I remember an interview in which he said that it’s proven psychologically that under pressure, players repeat patterns of behavior, and if they have this ‘data’ stored in their minds due to good training, success is likely to be around the corner.

However, Tite simply had an absurd turnover of players and insisted on veterans like Daniel Alves for way too long.

Considering the number of different calls and formations, I simply don’t see the team chemistry and the organization that this team would need to justify the top spot in the outright betting market as of October 3rd, so close to the beginning of the World Cup.

Brazil may eventually excel in the tournament, but they certainly have issues to deal with, not just because they didn’t have good adversaries to develop technically, but because of a dangerous choice of Tite to call way too many players since Russia 2018.

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