adminSAO PAULO. — Much has changed for Brazil’s national soccer team since last year’s humiliating World Cup exit, but as the 2018 qualifying campaign gets underway tomorrow one worrying factor stays the same: the absence of superstar Neymar.
More than a year has passed since that extraordinary 7-1 meltdown against Germany in Brazil’s own World Cup.
Since then there’s been the almost equally embarrassing failure to survive the Copa America, going out to lowly Paraguay on penalties. The coach has been changed and there have been endless postmortems.
But in all that turmoil, the football-mad nation has remained fixated on national captain and Barcelona star Neymar and the near obsessive fear that without him the “canarinha”, as the team’s called, cannot win. — AFP.
Online Reporter