Carlo Ancelotti has spent weeks warning that grit and resilience would decide a long, complicated World Cup. On this evidence, Brazil have been listening — even if, for much of the match against Japan, they seemed determined to test the theory to destruction.
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One could argue this was not simply a 2-1 Brazil victory. It seemed a familiar Ancelotti production: control, wobble, self-inflicted trouble and then, when logic was packing its bags for extra time, a late act of defiance that belonged as much to the heart as to the tactics board.
Ancelotti knows plenty about long, complicated tournaments from his years at Real Madrid. His best Real sides were not always flawless, but they carried something more dangerous than perfection: the certainty that the story was never over.
The similarities were hard to miss.
In 2022, Real roared back past Paris St Germain, Chelsea and Manchester City on their way to winning the Champions League, surviving situations that looked terminal until they suddenly were not.
It was not always tidy, far from that. But it was brutally effective, powered by competitive nerve, clarity in chaos and a refusal to accept the obvious conclusion. Even when it did not make sense.
Brazil, for so long, had that same World Cup aura. Every four years, the tournament seemed to become their property, their stage, their natural habitat. Like Real Madrid in the Champions League, they did not merely play in it. They occupied it. And there was always that feeling among rivals that you needed to beat them to belong.
Against Japan, this team in yellow offered both sides of the Ancelotti bargain.
Brazil dominated from the start and were the better team, but they were also exposed by mistakes that felt predictable, familiar and dangerous. Danilo, a full back with Real Madrid, Manchester City and Juventus but now a centre back who turns 35 in two weeks, misplaced a simple pass as Brazil tried to build from the back.
Casemiro, another of Ancelotti’s trusted old guard, was then unable to match a Japanese runner for speed, a reminder that experience can bring authority but not always legs.
For a while, Brazil looked trapped between their past and present: too grand to panic, too flawed to be comfortable.
Yet this is where Ancelotti’s teams tend to become most interesting. The Italian has never been obsessed with sterile domination. His greatest sides often live in the margins, where the game becomes emotional, messy and primal.
And almost in the final move, with Japan glancing anxiously towards extra time, Brazil found their escape hatch.
Teenager Rayan pressed relentlessly, stole the ball and fed Bruno Guimaraes, the pulse of Ancelotti’s machine.
Guimaraes found substitute Gabriel Martinelli drifting through a thicket of Japanese defenders and he delivered the kind of ruthless finish that crushes one team and convinces the other it is chosen.
For Japan, it was devastating. For Brazil, it was something close to restoration.
This was not Brazil at their most beautiful or their most complete. But World Cups are rarely won by purity. As Ancelotti reminded, they are won by teams who survive their bad passages, absorb their own mistakes and still believe there is one more moment left.
Ancelotti has seen that movie before. Now Brazil are trying to make it theirs.
Source: Khaleej Times