Even if you aren’t into soccer, whenever you hear the name Brazil, you immediately associate them with the sport and their iconic canary yellow shirt.

That’s because Brazil is the most successful and popular national team in the world with five World Cups, and has produced some of the greatest players that ever played the game— from Pele, Garrincha, Socrates, Zico, Ronaldo, Romario, Ronaldinho, Kaka in the past to Neymar, who is still active today.

However, Brazil has only won one World Cup in the last 25 years, which came back in 2002. They have crashed out of the tournament from the quarterfinal stage in every edition since by European teams except in 2014, when they reached the semis but got humiliated 7-1 at home by Germany.

The last World Cup hurt them a lot. Not only did they see their big rivals Argentina winning the tournament, but they crashed out of the quarters by an aging Croatian side, despite taking the lead in extra time.

Their coach Tite left, and some Brazilian fans were hopeful a new era would begin with a new coach and new generation of players that can stop the constant heartbreaks and disappointments.

They were wrong.

After the 2022 World Cup, the Brazilian Federation decided to take their time with appointing a new coach. Their goal, reportedly, was to go with interim coaches and wait until Carlo Ancelotti becomes available eventually.

If you didn’t think things could get worse for Brazilian football after the 2014 humiliation or the 2022 disappointment, 2023 would prove you wrong.

Under interim coaches Ramon Menezes and Fernando Diniz, Brazil suffered their worst ever year. In nine games played in 2023, they won three, drew once, and lost five times.

The losses included Senegal and Morocco in friendlies, and Colombia, Uruguay, and Argentina in World Cup qualifiers. The Argentina loss happened at home.

This is the result of the Federation’ incompetence by going a year without a permanent coach, and it was embarrassing for the Brazilian fans to see how badly they were playing.

Apart from the losses, they also drew at home against Venezuela. Brazil now sits at sixth out of 10 teams in the CONMEBOL World Cup qualifiers.

The Federation finally figured enough is enough and appointed a new permanent head coach earlier this year, Dorival Junior.

Though Dorival Junior is vastly experienced, he’s had 22 jobs in last 22 years as he’s known as the guy who comes in to clean up the mess and then leaves quickly. It seems like Brazil also wants him to do the same role before looking for a new permanent head coach for the World Cup.

Although he started off well with a win over England and a draw with Spain, the two draws against the USMNT and Costa Rica have once again made the fans complain about the team’s awful results and performances.

Apart from World Cup disappointments, Brazil has also only won the Copa America once in the last five editions, and the one they won was at home. Currently, they don’t look like a team that can win the tournament here in the U.S.

Another problem with Brazil is not just the coach, but the players themselves. Brazil no longer has the distinct identity they had with the canary yellow shirt, joga bonito. Now, they look just like an ordinary team.

Though the goalkeepers and center-backs are still world class, the current full-backs, midfielders, and strikers leave much to be desired.

To add salt to the wound, Vinicius Junior, who’s tearing it up with Real Madrid, looks like a shadow of himself when he comes play for Brazil.

He’s been deployed either as false nine or as a winger, but he’s yet to carry over the magic he’s shown in Europe. And when he’s not playing well, other players also fail to step up.

Some fans have figured this lack of identity comes from players leaving Brazil early for Europe, where they become over-coached and too rigid— thus losing their Brazilian style of playing.

When Brazil last won the World Cup, they had 12 domestic-based players in the 23-man squad. Now, for the Copa America, they only have three domestic-based players in the 26-man squad. Two of them are reserved keepers who will most likely not see any playing time.

The Brazilian League is still very strong, arguably the best league outside of the big five European leagues, and Brazilian clubs have been winning most of the CONMEBOL tournaments. However, less and less players from the league are getting called up to the national team every year. More players also leave for Europe as soon as an offer comes for financial reasons.

The fans fear if this continues, then Brazil will no longer be able to play joga bonito but be just another team with a boring European-style. With players becoming more rigid and not being able to express their creativity, the new generation of Brazil no longer has players who can create something out of nothing. 

Instead, these are players who can be role players in top European leagues but can’t really carry the national team like the older generations could.

Once Upton a time, Brazil lost out world class players like Diego Costa, Pepe, Thiago Motta, Deco, Jorginho, Thiago Alcantara, Marco Senna, and etc to other national teams as their squads were way too stacked. 

Now, they can no longer afford to lose any good players as most of their squad is filled with very average ones.