I’ve seen real Loews... but I have a sixth sense about my Brazil boys
BRAZIL are bigger favourites to win this World Cup with every day that passes.
I’m not just saying that because it is my country, but no other team is so well organised collectively, and has the individual quality in every position.
Neymar is finding his feet, the defence looks solid and the confidence is starting to flow. It would take a brave person to bet against us now. Or a stupid one.
It doesn’t hurt that so many of the other big teams have been struggling. Argentina went out yesterday to a France side which finally clicked, Spain have not produced their best and Germany, so dominant four years ago, failed to get out of their group. I know a lot of Brazilians celebrated that, but not me. When one of the great teams is going through a tough moment, I don’t like to punch them when they’re down.
It happened to Germany this year, but it could be us next time.
And we’ve already gone through some difficult times of our own, like the final defeat in 1998 and the 7-1 in 2014.
Things are looking rosy for Brazil now, though. The performance was good against Costa Rica, even though it took a while to score the goals, and we were even better against Serbia. I was delighted about the scorer of our first goal, too.
Paulinho is proving again that he’s an excellent player. He arrives in the area at just the right time, which makes him a nightmare for defenders. When you have creative players like Neymar and Philippe Coutinho, those late runs are so dangerous. He was superb at Corinthians, shone in China and now he’s playing well for Barcelona. The only place where he struggled to show his ability was Tottenham. That had to do with the style of English football – he never got up to speed and wasn’t able to get a long run in the side. But watch him for Brazil and his quality is obvious. He’s also one of the leaders on the pitch. Mexico are next up for the Everyone expects us to face Belgium in the last eight, but I’m backing Japan’s modern style of football to pull off a shock Seleção, and I’m expecting us to progress. Their win over Germany impressed me but they were well off the pace against Sweden. They looked tired, and I think they will suffer when they play against a team that plays with speed and intensity. Brazil will do just that. We’ll need to keep an eye on Javier Hernandez, who I used to watch at Real Madrid.
But our backline looks so strong: Thiago Silva and Miranda have been dominant, and Casemiro picks up the pieces in front of them.
Knockout games are always tough, but Brazil can take one more step towards a sixth World Cup title.