All teams retreat, everything is tactical and pre-exercised, nothing's vibrating. Germany is the exception. I wish Brazil would play like Germany (Tostao, from the Brazilian winning team of 1970)

That is too much of a praise, but I know what he means. Brazil was fed up with having an individually brilliant team and not winning the championship after 1970 for more than two decades. Then the public pressure decided if they couldn't have both at the same time, the title and the Samba, they'd go for the title instead.

Since then Brazil has been in all three finals but their play has lost the easiness and the Samba. They are still individually brilliant but it shows that the majority of their players now play in European teams. They have learned to play efficiently, with very low risk. and they have become more boring than before the 90s. With the exception of some rare incidents of individual brilliance they play much more like the other teams than at Pele's time. Sometimes for several minutes you can't tell they are Brazil and not some other team, except that their ball control is better than let's say Germany, but not really better than Mexico or Italy or France.

Germany had a team which was a pleasure to watch in the 60s and in part of the 70s. After then some individually great players left and they started to play like bureaucrats or exercising soldiers for more than two decades. They were successful but very boring to watch. They could destroy a game but they couldn't really play.

The present team plays a different style. Since more than two decades I have never had so much fun watching them as now. They are a bit young and the individual class is missing in some players but the way they play as a team is a welcome change from 20 years of what we call civil-servant-football.

Wolfgang