Brazilian football simply isn’t fun anymore

As a fleet of New York school buses crept over the Hackensack river on Saturday evening, from one window the Metlife Stadium protruded out of the surrounding swamp like an intergalactic prison, not unattractive but certainly unwelcoming, a liminal space as difficult to get into as it is to leave. From the other, Vinícius Jr glared down from a gargantuan billboard, alongside the words “joga solto”; play free. It turns out that 21 years after trademarking it both popularised and murdered the concept, even Nike has stopped trying to make joga bonito happen. It doesn’t have to be beautiful lads, but can it at least be fun?

Largely, no. Watching Brazil at a World Cup has remains a uniquely enticing prospect which invariably devolves into uniquely disappointing reality, like meeting Santa and then watching him take off his beard to have a fag. On Saturday evening Morocco were lighter and faster and more attractive, more coherent and whole. Carlo Ancelotti selected a deeply weird team, starting Ah-Ahly centre-back Roger Ibañez, who moved like a tectonic plate, on the right, and Casemiro, who didn’t move at all. He solved both those problems at half-time by bringing on 34-year-old Danilo, who hasn’t been starting for Flamengo, and the famously mobile Fabinho. Zenit St Petersburg left-back Douglas Santos played throughout, his club team-mate Luiz Henrique emerged from the bench and lurched down the wing as though wearing electrified underwear he had no control over. 

Of course, there were still brief flashes of alchemy. The low sunlight danced on the reds and greens and yellows was ethereal, veins of Moroccan fans weaved through the Brazilian mob. Vinícius’s goal was an exhibition of power and grace. Their fans occupied Times Square on Friday night, because Carnival is a state of mind. It still spoke to your inner child, but once you stop believing in magic, you can never believe again.

Up front was Igor Thiago, an exceptional footballer, all brute power and vertical lines. But Brazil’s No 9 simply cannot play at the Gtech Community Stadium every other week. Do you know what Gtech do? They sell hoovers. Hoovers are not joga bonito. Genuine suggestion: should the CFB follow rugby’s example, decree that players who want to represent the national team have to play for a designated group of clubs befitting what they want Brazilian football to be? Is the reputational cost of their No 9 playing for Brentford simply too great? Sometimes illusions are more important than substance, the stories we tell ourselves in order to live. Can the mythos survive both the 7-1 and an association with London’s seventh-biggest football club?

Pre-match Achraf Hakimi called Morocco the “Brazil of Africa”, but what does that actually mean? What does Brazilian football stand for in 2026? There is no recognisable play-style, player profile, philosophy, nothing that stretches beyond a feeling that watching them has not really evoked for 20 years. Hiring Ancelotti is the ultimate admission of this, the arch-pragmatist, their first significant non-Brazilian coach ever, having to import the vibes. 

It bears saying that it isn’t Brazil’s job to be the last bastion of footballing aestheticism. The American sociologist Janet Lever once wrote that Brazilian football is a living register of society’s potential, and maybe its decline just mirrors the fermenting world it inhabits, mirrors a sport ultimately flattened and shrunk by its ceaseless pursuit of growth. Maybe it’s just harder for myths to survive now, any semblance of mystique murdered by constant content. I don’t want to know that Neymar repeatedly supported Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right “Trump of the Tropics” set to die in prison. I don’t want to see him 34 and puffy having a dust-up with Robinho’s 18-year-old son.

Really, Brazilian football’s story over the past decade is Neymar’s; commercialisation usurping meaning, breaking body and spirit. Despite serious injury, Ancelotti said Neymar was called up in part to be “an inspiration to the young players in the squad.” What exactly is he supposed to inspire in them? He isn’t Jordan Henderson, off for a 5k before breakfast and helping pack the cones away. But maybe Ancelotti recognises this isn’t what his squad needs. Neymar will teach you to play poker, to decide when to care and when not to, how to film the most shameless adverts with a straight face, and how to do all of this while prioritising Brazil over all else. It is often ignored that international football has broken Neymar twice; first fracturing his back against Colombia then rupturing his ACL against Uruguay in 2024, the injury that effectively ended his elite career at 32. 

Since winning the 2002 World Cup, Brazil have endured quarter-final defeats to France in 2006, the Netherlands in 2010, Belgium in 2018, Croatia in 2022. They lost their only semi-final by the biggest margin of any team ever. There are no real signs of progress here, no nascent shoots of recovery. Most nations would be quietly pleased to meet them in the quarter-finals.

Last November the famed Brazilian physiotherapist Nilton Petrone declared Neymar Brazilian football’s “last genius”. There almost certainly will be another, but it will happen by chance, not design. Rayan and Endrick both remained on the bench at the Metlife. Estêvão Willian is a flickering talent, but has also made the fatal error of handing Chelsea control of his development, like trying to cultivate an orchid on Venus. The youngest defender in this squad is Ibanez at 27, no midfielders below 26. 

It is hard to imagine how the Selecao recovers from here, doesn’t just fall further from Europe’s elite, down the new international footballing order. Brazilian domestic football has also lost sight of itself, prioritised producing players for European clubs over anything graspable of their own, constantly chasing rather than inventing, became something procedural and profit-driven. And once you stop believing in magic, you can never believe again.

Photograph by Marc Atkins/Getty Images