"After 24 years, I think it is time for Brazil to win the World Cup again." Carlo Ancelotti said that to reporters with the calm certainty of a man who has won five Champions League titles and conquered every major league in Europe. The question isn't whether he believes it. It's whether Brazil — a country that sees soccer as a mirror of its national soul — can believe it too.
Only 29 percent of Brazilians think the Seleção will lift the trophy this year. That's the lowest figure since polling began in 1994. The trauma runs deep: the 7-1 humiliation by Germany on home soil in 2014, the quarterfinal exit to Croatia in 2022, four coaches in four years, and a squad that hasn't consistently played well together in a decade.
So Brazil did something it has never done before. It hired a foreigner to manage the national team at a World Cup. An Italian, no less — a man whose footballing heritage is rooted in catenaccio, the polar opposite of jogo bonito.
More than a caretaker
Ancelotti isn't here just to steady the ship. His first months suggest he understood the assignment went beyond tactics. He traveled the country, attended Carnival in three different states, visits a steakhouse weekly, is learning Portuguese, and has memorized the national anthem well enough to sing it before matches. That's not PR. That's a 66-year-old man with nothing left to prove deciding to go all in.
Kaká, who played 270 matches under Ancelotti at AC Milan and was part of Brazil's last World Cup-winning squad in 2002, put it plainly: "He knows how to work with star players, he adjusts the game and the team to suit them, and that makes a difference in a championship like the World Cup."
That adaptability is the core of what Ancelotti is attempting — a synthesis of Italian defensive discipline and Brazilian creative freedom. The exact balance, as it happens, that underpinned Brazil's 1994 and 2002 titles. After a 2-1 friendly loss to France in March, he was asked about his cautious approach. His answer: "World Cups are won by the team that concedes the fewest goals, not the one that scores the most." Critics winced. But he's not wrong.
The Neymar variable
Neymar, 34, is playing in what will almost certainly be his final World Cup. He's the last direct link to the Beautiful Game era — and he arrived in camp carrying a calf injury that rules him out of the early stages. Ancelotti left him off the initial roster entirely, citing fitness concerns, before adding him in the final announcement to erupting celebrations across the country.
The decision says a lot about how Ancelotti operates. He eventually included Neymar not on sentiment, but on the logic that "experience matters in this kind of competition" and that the squad's affection for him builds cohesion. Collective spirit over individual mystique — even when the individual is Neymar.
Brazil goes into the tournament not as favorites but, as TV Globo analyst Ana Thaís Matos put it, as "a surprise." In a group stage where Ancelotti leads the Seleção against Morocco at MetLife Stadium — the first foreigner to manage them at a World Cup — the betting markets will price them accordingly. That might actually suit him. Ancelotti has never needed to be the loudest team in the room to win the biggest prizes.
Even President Lula, who initially said he "did not see a foreigner saving Brazil," changed his tone after meeting Ancelotti at the presidential palace in January. He also swapped the official portrait outside his office for one of himself holding the World Cup trophy. Make of that what you will.
