Anxious Brazil looking to ‘run to the end’

Hosts step closer to sixth title as they face Colombia in last eight.

FORTALEZA: Brazil striker Neymar has admitted he is happy to win ugly as he looks to take another step towards delivering his country’s sixth World Cup on home soil against Colombia in Fortaleza on Friday.

La Selecao have been criticised for some of their less convincing performances on route to the quarter-finals, most notably in squeezing past Chile on penalties in the last 16.

“You can’t always enjoy yourself and win 4-0 or 5-0,” said the Barcelona man. Football nowadays is so difficult, so even, that the team who is most committed on the pitch ends up winning.

“I don’t want a show. That’s the last thing we are trying to do. We are not necessarily here to produce a spectacle. We are here to run to the end, until we are tired, and come out as winners.”

Neymar fell to the ground in tears as Chile’s Gonzalo Jara missed the decisive spot-kick in the shootout in Belo Horizonte with teammates Julio Cesar and captain Thiago Silva also seen to cry in relief as much as joy.

Worried that carrying the expectations of 200 million Brazilians is becoming too much for his squad, coach Luiz Felipe Scolari called the team’s sports psychologist Regina Brandao in for an extra session with the players on Tuesday.

And Neymar said the sessions were having the desired effect.

“I had never done anything like it before and I’m quite enjoying it,” added the 22-year-old.

“It’s not only us in football who are surrounded by emotions every day and need psychologists. I think it could do every person good, to make one more relaxed.”

Neymar also insisted he will be fully fit to face the Colombians despite suffering thigh and knee injuries against Chile.

Meanwhile, Scolari will be forced into at least one change from the side that faced Chile, as Luis Gustavo is suspended so Tottenham Hotspur’s Paulinho is expected to come back into the side.

Gustavo’s absence is even more critical for the hosts given the sensational form of the tournament’s top goal-scorer, Colombia’s James Rodriguez.

A fourth consecutive win for Jose Pekerman’s men took them into the last eight for the first time and ahead of the biggest game in Colombian football.

History, though, is against them as they have only beaten Brazil twice in 25 previous meetings and only once in a competitive fixture at the 1991 Copa America.

Published in The Express Tribune, July 4^th, 2014.

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