With the season just getting under way, the end of the campaign looks a long way off – unless you are a national team coach preparing for Russia 2018.
There are FIFA dates coming up at the end of this month and again in October, more dates in November for play-offs and friendlies, and a few days for friendlies next March – and that's it until the squads have to be named for the World Cup. So there are precious few opportunities to get the balance right before the big tournament.
In the short term, most teams are still concerned with getting over the line and making sure of their place in Russia. Building for the competition is still a secondary consideration.
But not Brazil. After a spectacular 2016/17, they qualified with four rounds to spare, becoming the first team other than the hosts to book their slot. They have no need to worry about scrambling around for points. Their problem is different – making sure they have not peaked too soon.
There are no prizes for coming top of the table in South America’s marathon World Cup qualification campaign. Brazil know that only too well. Sixteen years ago it was Argentina cruising to a place in Japan and South Korea, with Brazil nervously waiting until the final round to make sure of their presence. But come the competition Argentina were knocked out in the group phase, while Brazil won every game on the way to World Cup win No.5.
Brazil, though, needed the morale boost of those eight consecutive victories under new coach Tite. When he took charge just over a year ago the team were lying sixth in the table, outside the qualification slots and in real danger of missing out on a World Cup for the first time ever.
To the background of a worrying recession and a turbulent political climate, Tite has given his compatriots something to believe in; TV ratings for Brazil’s last few World Cup qualifiers were extremely high. And there is also, of course, the trauma of the 2014 World Cup, and that 7-1 defeat by the Germans, to overcome.
Going into that competition, no one in Brazil saw the humiliation coming. Vastly experienced coach Luiz Felipe Scolari was exuding confidence. A few months before the tournament he addressed an audience of Brazilian coaches. With the 3-0 win over Spain in the final of the Confederations Cup still fresh in his mind, he declared that “we’ve done the hard part... we’ve found our team.” Scolari stuck loyally to the same line-up – and during the course of June and July 2014, the whole thing unravelled.
Tite does not want to make the same mistake. The players he's used have done everything asked of them and more – eight qualification games, eight wins, 24 goals scored and two conceded are figures that speak for themselves.
The first XI rolls off the tongue; Alisson in goal, a back four of Daniel Alves, Marquinhos, Miranda and Marcelo, Casemiro protecting them and playing behind a line of Phillippe Coutinho, Paulinho, Renato Augusto and Neymar, with Gabriel Jesus up front. They are first choices on merit. But as well as retaining their confidence, Tite needs to promote competition and avoid complacency – not always an easy balancing act to achieve.
The coach also needs to legislate for injuries and loss of form. The now China-based midfielder Renato Augusto has suffered greatly with injuries during his career. Working with a physiotherapist appears to have improved matters, but he is an important player in the team, and so there must be a worry that he might break down at the vital moment.
This is especially important in the light of the move to Barcelona of his midfield partner Paulinho. The Tottenham flop has been outstanding for Brazil over the past year. But will his style of play dovetail with Barcelona’s passing game? If not, might he lose form, just as he did in the run up to 2014?
Then there is the situation with the goalkeeper. Alisson has not let Tite down, but he spent all of last season on the bench with Roma. If he's a reserve again this season, might that take the edge off his game? It could well be significant that last week Tite brought Cassio of Corinthians into the squad. The pair fell out at the end of their time together at club level. But Cassio had earlier been a rock for Corinthians, and has the reputation for coming up big in the key games – he was man of the match in the final of the 2012 Club World Cup final against Chelsea, for example. Alternatively, there might be a chance for Ederson, Manchester City’s expensive new signing.
Ederson is one of six Premier League-based players named in the squad to face Ecuador and Colombia. No other country supplies as many players. This in itself could be a cause for concern. Champions League results in recent years would seem to refute the claims of the Premier League to be the best in the world. But there is no doubting its strength in depth and grinding intensity – or its lack of a winter break.
It's not just the England team who have disappointed in recent World Cups; it's many England-based players as well. With Brazil lacking options at centre-forward, it's vital that Gabriel Jesus is still full of gas come the end of the club campaign, and assuming he stays with Liverpool, Coutinho might also be a worry. The opening weekend’s Premier League action has tended to re-enforce the point that this is not a championship where it's possible to coast.
Given the need to nurse players through the rigours of the season, Brazil’s FA have made a strange choice of venue for their upcoming home game. On September 5 they travel to face Colombia at Barranquilla near the Caribbean coast. Five days earlier they host Ecuador in the southern city of Porto Alegre. Not only do their European-based stars have two long journeys across the Atlantic, but between them there is a seven-and-a-half-hour trip from one end of South America to the other. Brazil have gone out of their way to make their players clock up as many air miles as possible.
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