Brazil: Vinicius Junior and co humiliated by Argentina – analysis

Tuesday’s prolonged humiliation did not come out of the blue.

In game after game the team have looked disjointed, without clear strategies for progressing the ball down the field, and suffering from the possibility of being both outplayed and outnumbered in central midfield.

Individual talent has papered over the cracks – like on Thursday, when a stoppage-time Vinicius Jr special gave them a victory over Colombia their play had not really deserved.

But it can’t happen all the time.

And if the film is bad, especially if the cast is impressive, the director must be to blame.

There is a crisis in Brazilian coaching. It is hard to produce coaches when there is no time to train and no job security. That is the reality of domestic Brazilian football, and helps explain why almost all of the successful coaches in the country are now foreign – either Argentine or, especially, Portuguese.

The national boss – for now anyway – Dorival Jr is a product of the domestic game, with more than four decades’ experience as player and coach.

But on the international stage he comes across as a decent man thoroughly out of his depth.

Did he really think he could travel to Argentina and play two men in central midfield? Why not drop deep and create space for the counter-attack, as he did a year ago against England at Wembley? And when cool heads were required, his team came across as a bag of nerves, all too willing to get involved in cheap spats.

Of the three duties of the coach – pick the team, determine the strategy and set the emotional tone – Dorival failed dismally, and it is very hard to see how he can keep his job.

If he is to be replaced, there would seem to be two options. One is to go foreign – the Portuguese coach Jorge Jesus would be a strong candidate. The other would be to fast-track former Chelsea left-back Filipe Luis – a man of great intelligence who has made an impressive start to his coaching career with Rio giants Flamengo.