Brazil just looking so good for 2006

Watched the Brazil v Chile qualifier last night, and saw some great football from the hosts. Their defence is slightly questionable but those questions were not asked entirely by the Chilean forwards, who were dwarfed in terms of performance by their Brazilian counterparts. The talk of the game was their second goal. Defender Juan winning possession on the half-way line, feeding Robinho in the Chilean half, who sent a ball across to Adriano on the right, who skipped a tackle and crossed with his right foot, Kaka coming down onto the left side and knocking the ball back across with his first touch, Ronaldo picked it up and with quick feet tapped it to Robinho, whose first touch finished the whole move with a goal. It was a template for how to attack with efficiency and to finish with style.

Adriano looks strong, good body strength like Emile Heskey but not as bulky, has pace, a good left foot and a sharp eye for goal. He scored a hat-trick, two of his goals involved him running just behind but to the side of the defence, in space, no one picking him up or tracking him, and when the ball was passed to him, he had the time and space to pick his shot.

Chile's position interests me as it has a bearing on their FIFA ranking and Mark Gonzales's move to Liverpool in January. They lie just outside the play-off position and need to beat Columbia and Ecuador on the 8th and 11th October respectively to stand a chance of qualifying, and even then it would seem to ask a lot of the other countries above them to suddenly lose their final games.

Having held Brazil at home 1-1, Chile were a shadow of that performance. They seemed unfortunate but lacked any ambition against a side that had Ronaldinho missing. They conceded initially from a soft header, the third via an Adriano shot, the fourth from an Adriano header from a corner and the fifth a carbon copy of the third goal.

Brazil join Argentina as early qualifiers for Germany 2006, and certainly have laid down the gauntlet to anyone who wishes to deny them another World Cup title.


RedsMan.