[whomario]

Originally Posted by DaddyTorgo

Brazil didn't look great though. For a team with great WBs (Dani Alves & Marcelo) and deploying Hulk and Neymar (nominally) on the wings I though they lacked width. Everything seemed to be "feed the ball to Neymar" and he seemed to be more central than out on the wing most of the time.

I think the team might be lacking a central-playmaker, which is where someone like a Kaka or a Ronaldinho, or even a Ganso might have come in handy. Oscar can be that player too, but he didn't really show it today.

The pairing of Luiz Gustavo and Paulinho did nothing for me. They were basically invisible and Rakitic/Modric/Kovacic ran all over them. I'd rather see Hernanes and/or Ramires in there.

Some disagreements here, hope you don´t mind

Oscar was on the right wing basically all game, Neymar in the middle but sometimes drifting out. Was a conscious decision by Scolari to switch that up. Problem was that Alves had a craptastic game on both ends and kept on missing the holes on offense that Oscar kept creating, who in my eyes had a really good game.

Imo it is a good decicion, because that way you have Neymar where he can do the most roaming without hurting the stability of the formation and also can be most easily hidden defensively (especially with Fred dropping back considereably at times). And i thought Neymar had a really good game, even aside from the goal. Not everything worked (a few too many easy mistakes trying to deliver passes or running at the defense), but he definitely stepped up and made himself available to his teammates and didn´t shy away from putting in the work.

I personally think that Hulk is the weak link in that arrangement, he seems kind of out of place on the left wing (as opposed to the right, where he played a lot previously)

I did not see Gustavo/Paulinho getting run all over, at all. The croatian midfield had a strong game, but mostly on defense imo. On offense their main weapon was getting the ball to the left early and often (again, Alves was unbelievably bad) to Olic and then try to cross it.

Paulinho was definitely not all that good, but imo Gustavo had a flawless game in the role he has to play. I would swap Paulinho for Ramires personally.