Kolkata: Kolkata is getting ready as Brazil to play Germany in a battle of two great footballing traditions at the Salt Lake Stadium. No doubt, the game has all the ingredients to become one of the greatest football fests in the history of the football crazy city. Kolkata who is known to have a huge fan base for the South American giants, will get to see their favourite team to confront with the mighty Germans for the first time at the VYBK.
Brazil though have a little injury concern ahead of their crucial tie as their first choice left full-back Weverson has a little back problem, which had troubled him against Honduras as well. Brazil coach Carlos Amadeu confessed that in the press conference, “Luan Candido came on as a substitute against Honduras in place of Weverson, as he had a back problem and similar can happen tomorrow as well. Luan played really well the other night and he deserves a place in the first team. He is good enough.” He added, “I don’t think we have an advantage. I think all teams are prepared for competition like this. When you have too many matches, travel and the conditions of weather and climate, so everybody prepares for all this. you can lose a player through suspension but every team is prepared. When we prepared with 21 players, we talked about players who could do more than one role. Players who could play in different positions. We can lose players for injury and cards. Germany are prepared for this too I am sure.
Germany will no doubt be a difficult team to beat and Amadeu knows that pretty well. A little circumspect in his approach, he said, “Brazil against Germany is a world classic across all ages. This is because both teams try to play attacking football and not sit back. Mostly you have great games when you see Brazil against Germany. Since the last round, the aim is to win. If you don’t win, you don’t go through. The boys have to be balanced. If they are losing the match, to reverse the situation and if they are winning to keep focussed and keep winning. You can have penalty kicks to decide the winner. They have to be prepared. We have been training for this moment since 2015. We have two and half years with the boys.”
Each game has its own history and they are different. Honduras was strong in some aspects. Germany was strong in another aspect. Also Korea was strong in other aspects. Each team has its own characteristics. We are prepared for all situations. During our preparation, we played against teams from Europe, teams from Africa, teams from North America, Asia. We received teams in Brazil and went out to play away. So we tried to show these guys all situations we could for this compeitition.
Amadeu seemed well prepared as he said, “We have tried all situations. We played matches when we were thinking only about defensive system and then we played another match thinking about the offensive system playing one match with our wingers and we were attacking with our midfielders. So we have tried to play with all situations to prepare for this moment.”
Talking about the game, the gaffer said, “We cannot lose for ourselves. We cannot lose for fault of ours or lack of preparation. If other team is better than us, it’s ok. We accept defeat. But we cannot lose control of our minds during the match. Our intention would be to entertain the fans and not to disappoint them. We want to give our honest efforts so that we cannot blame ourselves for a bad result. We are ready”.
The coach Carlos Amadeu, who had an intense training session in the morning, was seen taking a serious class on the white board to discuss his strategy with the players. Amadeu said, “In the opponent, we always have to give these youth players information. There are three ways – watching, viewing and experience. We tried to reach them with videos of their opponent with this tactical board as you have seen. Also with words and experiencing in training sessions. This is how we tried to give them information about the game.”
The entire Brazilian team had a walk through session at the playing pitch after their training. Amadeu said, “When we come to a new stadium, we try to keep in mind to watch the stadium. They have to feel the soul of the stadium and not all about knowing the grass. This is a very important stadium, facility for India. We are imagining about the 60,000 that will be here tomorrow.”