Brazil coach Dorival Jr has insisted the team are under renovation and are a work in progress after bowing out of Copa America in the quarter final stage against Uruguay.
Despite being a man short in the second half, Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay are also to keep the South American giants quiet in regular team before sending them packing with a 4-2 penalty shootout victory to book a semi-final ticket to battle Colombia.
Brazil had put in a string of unimpressive performances at the tournament, sharing the spoils twice in the group stage and beating only Paraguay before their second successive last eight exit from a major tournament, coming off the back of the 2022 World Cup.
“We are undergoing a very important renovation or reinvention of this team. I have only coached this team for eight matches and this is a process that we have to go through,” said Dorival.
“We are aware of the difficulties we will come across throughout the path, but we now lost a match in the knockouts and that wasn’t what we expected.
“But I repeat, we have a lot of room to continue growing, evolving, improving and our main objective now is to qualify for the World Cup. Right now we are sixth in the [CONMEBOL] standings, we are not comfortable with that.”
Dorival, who took control of the national team only in January, also lavished Bielsa’s Uruguay, saying it was a team Brazil could aspire to be after the Argentine instilled his philosophy on the side.
“I think the Uruguayan national team has a pattern, a very well-defined pattern. They have been working for a long time together. They had some problems at first, they corrected them,” Dorival added.
“Now they are finding great results. I think we will achieve all that as well, not a doubt about it, but we need some time to make such corrections.
“We had some issues at the beginning of the tournament. I think we corrected plenty of mistakes… It is tough given the period of time that we had to work to try to speed up the process. I think we’ll have some more time in the future.”
