Copa America Will Be A Test For Mano Menezes's New Look Brazil

Filed under: Football

On Sunday, the Copa America kicks off in Argentina. The surprising thing being that not until the final, on July 24th, will any game be played in Buenos Aires, the heart surely of the Argentine game with it's famous stadia. Brazil, with what should be a non too taxing game against an admittedly improved Venezuela, open the show in La Plata. With a largely rebuilt team which, under the new aegus of 49 year old Mano Menezes, now have a much more relaxed and adventurous approach to the game than they did under the counter attacking caution of Dunga.

Argentina kick off on Friday, like Brazil, in La Plata, against Bolivia, never the same team away from the dizzying, breathless heights of 9000 feet La Paz; where they humiliated Argentina in a World Cup qualifier not so long ago. Lionel Messi, renowned as the best player in the world but never the same with Argentina as with Barcelona, will be there.

Carlos Tevez, dramatically, almost wasn't. Despite his prolific scoring season with Manchester City, he was originally omitted from the squad by Sergio Batista, once himself an accomplished midfield international. Tevez is perfectly fit, but the word is that Batista hasn't forgiven him for supposedly ducking out of a match against Brazil on spurious grounds of injury. Absent, too, is another attacking star in Atletico Madrid's Sergio Aguero, son in law of Diego Maradona, explosive and contentious predecessor to Batista. Whose insistence that there are "more appropriate players for his position than Tevez" makes scant sense. But he's brought back Inter's 38 year old right back Javier Zanetti!

Brazil badly need these games as they are limited to nothing but friendlies till they play host to the 2014 World Cup. For which they are supposedly making alarmingly slow progress in new stadia and in aerial communications. In this tournament, they must hope that the highly promising 20-year-old playmaker Paulo Henrique Ganso, internationally inexperienced, is fit enough to make the bullets for the highly gifted but volatile 19-year-old Neymar, his Santos club mate, to fire. The recent pictures of Neymar energetically kicking a grounded Penarol opponent during the second leg of the Copa Libertadores Final may deter those European including Chelsea, who want him.

 

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Source: http://www.fanhouse.co.uk/2011/06/28/copa-america-brazil-argentina/

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