The Brazilian national team's flop at the World Cup, eliminated by Norway in the round of 16 (it had not exited the competition so early since 1990), even ended up in Parliament. Many Brazilians have in fact Carlo Ancelotti identified as the main culprit of the failure of a expedition that the Italian coach himself had loaded with expectations: “We will win the World Cup,” he had promised none other than President Lula in a meeting in Brasilia on January 26, and striker Vinicius Jr revealed before the tournament that “Ancelotti calls me every week to tell me that we will bring home the Cup.”
But this has not happened and a large part of public opinion and even the press are now calling for the return of a Brazilian coach to lead the Seleçao, to the point that the federal deputy Luiz Carlos Hauly, of the centre-right party Podemos, presented to the Chamber of Deputies a bill (PL 3.582/2026) which requires the Brazilian national team coach and the entire coaching staff to hold Brazilian citizenship. The bill also includes more restrictive rules, including a ban on calling up players who play for clubs abroad and a ban on the Football Federation accepting sponsorships from sports betting sites.
To become law, Hauly's ultra-autarchic project will have to be examined by several parliamentary commissions and approved by both the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, before being submitted to the President of the Republic for promulgation. It's unlikely this will happen, but the fact that it's reached this point undoubtedly indicates widespread intolerance toward Ancelotti, who, with his usual method, professed calm and confidence. But this wasn't enough, and now public opinion is presenting him with the bill. First of all, many did not forgive him for the call-upsBrazil was one of the oldest teams in the World Cup, with 11 of the 26 players over 30 years old.
Then there was the Neymar case, called up by popular demand but handled horribly, to the point of making him a liability rather than a potential all-rounder. Finally, the substitutions during matches, especially the one against Norway, which had a disastrous second half: it's true that everyone is good at coaching from the couch, in Brazil as in Italy, but this time the results proved Carletto wrong, and so any criticism seems justified. One fact in particular was considered shameful against the Scandinavians: 34% possession, the lowest in the Seleção's glorious World Cup history.
But there's more. As evidence of the probable "boiling" of many of Ancelotti's chosen players, Brazil came 35th out of 48 national teams for average speed of players on the pitch, and above all finished last in average time to recover the ball: 96 seconds, twice as bad as Spain and now even worse than Haiti and Curaçao. Finally, many have not forgiven the Italian coach for having boarded a plane to join his family in Canada just minutes after the stinging elimination from the World Cup, rather than returning on the Federation's flight to Brazil to deal with the crisis, as institutional etiquette would have dictated.
