Better Brazil Team: 2009 or 2012?

The Brazil team that played last night is not the "current" Brazil team. It's just their Olympic (U-23) team, with 4 players over 23.

The team we played last night will be very similiar to their 2014 roster, and they're insanely talented.

This up and comming Brazilian group is the best they've had in over a decade.

Also consider that Alves, Luiz, and Ganso are all part of this Brazlian group. They're just carrying injuries.

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The team we played last night will be very similiar to their 2014 roster, and they're insanely talented.

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I agree. To say it's simply the Olympic U-23 team, while true, is a bit misleading. Their household name stars like Lucio, Maicon, Kaka, Ronaldinho, Robinho etc are in decline and this group minus a couple of players is their present as well as future and not really a group that will end up getting deeply culled like most U-23 rosters.

A perfect example is that the GK was probably the most noteworthy beginner they fielded and we saw how that worked out for them.

What was possible against this team was to take advantage of their youth in the backline without a veteran like Lucio being paired with Thiago Silva when they were throwing everyone forward in the first half and daring us to break their press.

I think there's a bit of blame to go around for that. As many have pointed out, Edu wasn't going to do much getting the ball right in front of the 18 pressured by 2 defenders with the responsibility to pick out an incisive forward pass or wriggle out into open. JK's tactics early on in this regard may be partly to blame but I ca certainly see he felt he needed Edu's defense in that spot as well.

But, really, all that's kind of nitpicking as Brazil is a lot better than we are and there's no real shame in losing to them. In many ways I thought we had long stretches where we looked a lot less "overwhelmed" than we did against Italy and France even though we snuck away with a win and 1-0 defeat in those matches.