Brazil maintained their 100% record in this winter’s World Cup with their narrow 1-0 win over Switzerland on Monday, having comfortably defeated Serbia last week.
Tite’s men are one of the favourites to win the tournament and have now secured their passage to the next round in Qatar with one game to spare – the 90-minute affair against Cameroon later this week.
Three Manchester United players were named in Brazil’s 26-man squad, four if you count Alex Telles (on loan at Sevilla). And all four players were involved on Monday, with one star, in particular, stealing all the headlines.
Brazil were turgid in the first half and never got out of second gear. Ahead of the game, the South American were dealt a heavy blow when it emerged that Neymar was ruled out of the remaining group games.
His absence was obvious in the first half as Lucas Paqueta failed to fill the Neymar-shaped hole. Fred was drafted back into the side but was withdrawn after roughly an hour.
Casemiro started again and it looked like he had assisted Brazil’s first goal when Vinicius Jr scored from his perfectly weighted pass. VAR intervened and the goal was disallowed.
Brazil were chasing a second win from as many games and Antony was handed a 15-minute cameo despite not training in the build-up due to a stomach bug. Alex Telles was also a late substitute.
But it was Casemiro who would score that elusive winner, thundering the ball past resilient Swiss shot-stopper Yann Sommer with roughly seven minutes to play.
Brazil will face one of the teams from Group H in their first knockout game. Among the teams in that group are Portugal and Uruguay, who face off against each other later tonight.
United stars Bruno Fernandes, Diogo Dalot and Facundo Pellistri are all involved but only Fernandes has been handed a starting berth.
