New Managers in Real Madrid and Brazil

It was a change foretold: Xabi Alonso, the former Real Sociedad, Liverpool and Real Madrid successful manager of Bayer Leverkusen was going to manage Real Madrid one day. After Carlo Ancelotti's meager season that appears to end with no titles, Xabi Alonso will now try to bring the unlikely success he brought to Leverkusen (giving them their first Bundesliga title ever), to Real Madrid.

Despite the poor season Carlo Ancelotti leaves Madrid with three Champions League titles in his two stints as Real Madrid manager, as well as two league titles, a Copa del Rey and a Club World Cup title since his second stint started in 2021. 

While Ancelotti is surely one of the most successful managers in the world, he is taking on a huge challenge, perhaps the biggest in world football: he will be the new manager of Brazil!And the first non-Brazilian ever to manage Brazil, so all eyes will be on him as Brazil tries to get up again from Dorival Junior's disastrous stint and humiliating defeat to Argentina in the World Cup qualifiers. 

All eyes will surely be on Ancelotti, much more than on Xabi Alonso!

The Brazilian dinosaur

Brazilian football suffered a terrible humiliation in this World Cup, and with the exit of Scolari it was perhaps time to find some renewal in Brazilian football.
Not so. Brazil has not learned, and seems determined to continue its slide further down the modern and beautiful game, and losing more of its many admirers.
The new national team coach is Dunga, who as captain in 1994 symbolized the modern Brazilian player: hard working, physically strong and with a hard kick, but with little technique and flair. Dunga would have been a great Scottish player in the 1980s.
And Dunga has already coached Brazil: in 2007 he coached them when they won the Copa America, playing a style of football that Brazil is becoming infamous for: destroying the opposition's rhythm with a lot of small fouls and purely going after goals on set-pieces. The exact recipe that has stopped working because Brazil has stopped producing players that could play like Spain or Germany.
Be sure that under Dunga we will see more of the same negative football from Brazil, who may risk more humiliation in the coming 2015 Copa America, and perhaps even in the World Cup qualifiers.
Could it be a World Cup without Brazil??
Too early to tell...
Nevertheless, Brazil is like a dinosaur that refuses to change and learn from the outside. One would have thought that Germany had given the Brazilians a footballing lesson, but like a stubborn old man, Brazil refuses to learn.

New old coach for Brazil

Brazil must win the 2014 World Cup at home. The most winning football nation in World Cup history has never won the World Cup at home (until Spain won it, they were the only ones), after their debacle in the 1950 World Cup against Uruguay. There is no doubt that not winning it at home again would lead to a similar collective depression as 1950.
Therefore the matches of the Brazilian national team under manager Mano Menezes have been followed closely, and have surely not been convincing. Brazil was set on winning their first Olympic gold in London, but lost the final to Mexico, and although they had good results against weaker sides, they seemed to struggle when up against quality sides. Last week Brazil played what is effectively an Argentie B-side in the "super-clasico" friendly match. They won 2-1 on a penalty kick by Neymar in the final minutes of the match. But Brazil had looked weak against Argentina, and during the match fans had cheered for the return of coach Luis Felipe Scolari.
So Menezes was fired, and Scolari has been announced as new coach. He was also made coach in 2001 when Brazil was in crisis and failing to qualify for the 2002 World Cup. Scolari succeeded: he led the team to take the 2002 World Cup title, and then stepped down as coach. Since then he has had a disappointing career, first coaching Portugal, then Chelsea, Bunyodkor in Uzbekistan, and ending in Palmeiras, from where he was fired a few months ago after the team was at the bottom end of the Brazilian championship. Without work, he was called for from many parts to take over Brazil.
It remains to be seen whether he can put Brazil on the right track for the World Cup. In 2002 he had an incredibly talented generation of Brazilian players that included Cafu, Rivaldo, Ronaldinho and Ronaldo. While this generation is surely talented it remains to be seen whether Scolari can bring out the best of them, and whether the best of them will be enough to give them the World Cup title they are longing for.
All eyes are on Luis Felipe Scolari.