Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

Diniz guided Fluminense to the Copa Libertadores this year and is seen, in some quarters, as a tactical visionary. The issue is that his ideas require patience and time. The former is anathema to large swathes of the Brazilian football public. The latter is, by definition, in short supply.

It is not just that international management is a stop-start job, with precious little time to train. It is that Diniz is only supposed to be in the job until next summer, when Brazil expect Carlo Ancelotti, their absentee valentine, to take the reins. The Selecao do not have a competitive fixture between now and then. As so often, this comes back to Brazil’s federation. The CBF is not quite the moral and strategic vacuum it was a few years ago, but the decision to appoint Diniz already smacks of muddled thinking. Even if he had been a roaring success, it would have created a problem with the handover to Ancelotti, since the two have very little in common in tactical terms. “Just when one transition comes to an end, another will begin,” noted O Globo’s Carlos Eduardo Mansur last week. Now, just a few months after his appointment, the decision to give a short-term job to a long-term project guy looks to have backfired spectacularly, both in sporting and human terms. Thanks to their Ancelotti infatuation, Brazil have essentially wasted a year. Diniz, meanwhile, who should be celebrating the most successful season of his entire career, is slowly failing at a dream job that isn’t really his anyway.