World Cup Comment: Will An Attractive Or An Ugly Brazil Show Up In South Africa?

It comes as no surprise to anyone that Brazil coach Dunga has little to no desire to entertain football fans around the world with that typical joga bonito flair. Only one thing matters to the former defensive midfielder known as 'Dopey', and that is winning.

Brazil swept to a comfortable 2-0 victory over Ireland in Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium in their first friendly encounter in the lead up to the 2010 World Cup, but the Selecao looked anything but comfortable in the first half as they were put on the backfoot for large periods and it was the Irish who appeared the likelier side to score in the early exchanges.

Dunga’s men didn’t look like they wanted to play football at all. Apart from a few long range efforts, the kind that teams resort to when they run out of inventive ideas and creativity in the build-up from midfield, Brazil barely posed a serious threat.

The South Americans indeed were starved of ideas in the first half. Kaka was unable to stamp his authority, Robinho hardly had a chance to run with the ball or show off and Adriano had all of two touches.

This Brazil side is by no means defensive minded or boring to watch but they certainly are a team who are not afraid to sit back and absorb pressure from the opposition. This is in fact often their preferred style of play in the opening phases of a game, readily inviting rivals to attack them while they look to break forward with speed on the counter-attack, which was precisely how they took the lead against Ireland.

And that is partly the reason why Dunga is not in much of a hurry to reinstate Ronaldinho to the squad and why he is not too crazy about calling up Alexandre Pato or Diego, all of whom are highly flamboyant, creative players who may have a tendency to overlook defensive duties.

But in the second period against the Irish, a completely different Brazil side emerged from the tunnel, eventhough Dunga made no changes to his personnel on the pitch. The Samba Stars played as though they were dying to explode and crawl out from their own skin and revert to their old joga bonito philosophies.

Granted, the Irish defence began to lose their focus after the restart and the Brazilians were afforded more time and space to strut their stuff, but it was as if Dunga had told his players in the dressing room during the interval to go out and have fun in the second half.

While Brazil’s first goal was scrappy and fortunate, their second was a goal that typified what Brazilian football is all about.

They strung together over 20 passes in total before Kaka, Grafite and Robinho combined with a series of one-two’s and backheel flicks which sliced open the tiring Irish backline for ‘O Principe’ to polish off the move with the coolest of finishes.

And it is this quality which makes Brazil one of the hot favourites to lift their sixth World Cup in about five months’ time: the ability to effortlessly switch from one extreme style to another, the ability to win games whether they are playing well, playing ugly, or not playing at all.

Neutral football fans around the world would love to see a sexy Brazil head to and leave South Africa as the king of the world, but at this stage, there’s simply no telling which Brazil will turn up.

At the rate things have been going for them, it may not matter anyway, since they appear to be winning good, bad or ugly.