Dorival Junior urges patience with Brazil´s rebuild after Copa America exit

Dorival Junior has asked for time to complete his revamp of the Brazil national team after the Selecao’s Copa America exit.

Brazil, nine-time Copa America champions, lost 4-2 on penalties after a 0-0 draw with 10-man Uruguay in Las Vegas on Saturday.

Eder Militao and Douglas Luiz were unsuccessful from 12 yards, as a disappointing and often disjointed campaign for Brazil, who were without the suspended Vinicius Junior, came to a halt.

Dorival left out some big names for the tournament, while Neymar was absent through injury, and the coach, who was appointed in January, has reiterated the rebuild will require some patience.

He said: “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.

“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.”

Endrick played the full 90 minutes and completed one pass. Can you guess which one it was?#URUBRA #CopaAmerica pic.twitter.com/DHndKjPcCc

— Opta Analyst US (@OptaAnalystUS) July 7, 2024

Brazil are sixth in the South American qualification standings for the 2026 World Cup, and Dorival knows the Selecao must sharpen up.

“We have a lot of room to continue growing, evolving, improving and our main objective now is to qualify for the World Cup,” he continued.

“Right now we are sixth in the standings, we are not comfortable with that.”

Dorival did, however, point to Uruguay’s rise back to form under Marcelo Bielsa as evidence that long-term projects can come to fruition.

“I think the Uruguayan national team has a pattern, a very well-defined pattern,” he said.

“They have been working for a long time together. They had some problems at first, they corrected them.

“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.”