(Reuters) – Brazil are still a work in progress with a lot of room to grow and improve following Saturday’s Copa America quarter-final exit at the hands of Uruguay, coach Dorival Jr said as they shift their focus to the World Cup qualifiers.
Marcelo Bielsa’s Uruguay were reduced to 10 men in the second half but kept Brazil at bay in regulation time before beating them 4-2 on penalties to advance to the semi-finals where they will play Colombia.
Brazil had failed to impress at the tournament, drawing twice in the group stage while beating only Paraguay before their second straight quarter-final exit from a major tournament following the 2022 World Cup.
“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,” Dorival said while taking “full responsibility” for their exit.
“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.
“But I repeat, we have a lot of room to continue growing, evolving, improving and our main objective now is to qualify for the World Cup. Right now we are sixth in the (CONMEBOL) standings, we are not comfortable with that.”
Dorival, who took the national team job only in January, also praised Bielsa’s Uruguay, saying it was a team Brazil could aspire to be after the Argentine instilled his philosophy on the side.
“I think the Uruguayan national team has a pattern, a very well-defined pattern. They have been working for a long time together. They had some problems at first, they corrected them,” Dorival said.
“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.”
(Reporting by Rohith Nair in Bengaluru; Editing by William Mallard)
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