Dunga’s boot camp means no more fantasy football

JOHANNESBURG - A giant TV screen, a golf course and a forest. That is the view that Kaka and company wake up to every morning during this World Cup - but the reality is something quite different.

The sanitised surroundings of Brazil’s team hotel, The Fairway Resort and Spa of Johannesburg, are in keeping with the functional football the five-times Champions have brought to this tournament.

Each player has his own room, a rare privilege for most of the stars of this World Cup. And Luis Fabiano and team-mates are sleeping in beds never before slept in - the Brazilians are the first clients in this newly-built hotel.

When the players are not training they are incarcerated in the complex, sentenced to perpetual playstation sessions, table tennis or golf in the neighbouring Randpark Club.

With the hotel reserved exclusively for them, contact with the outside world is minimal and it is this overdose of privacy that seems to have had an adverse influence on the daily press conferences.

Players put up to speak are hand-picked by the coach and tend to repeat rehearsed answers as if they were mantras.

Of the most-repeated phrases: “This squad is not divided into first-team players and substitutes”; “All 23 players are concentrating on the same aim which is to win the World Cup”; “Unity is our strength”; and “You have to beat everyone to win the

tournament” are the most popular.

In contrast to the “happy family” atmosphere encouraged by Luiz Felipe Scolari in South Korea and Japan in 2002, Dunga’s regime seems more like a military operation where all the soldiers must give up their individuality to follow the commander-in-chief.

The legion of 800 Brazilian journalists have not been able to hide their discontent at the regime.

“I have been following Brazil since 1982 and this has never happened. All the players limit themselves to repeating the doctrine of the coach Dunga, who only picked players who he knew would accept his principles,” Brazilian reporter Eraldo Leite told the German Press Agency DPA.

For many analysts the boring robotic nature of the press conferences has been carried through on to the pitch where the famous “jogo bonito” has been replaced by disciplined defending and patient attacking.

Dunga, of course, has a pre-prepared answer to that question too. “It is also nice to have good team organisation. It forms part of basketball and volleyball so why should it not form part of football? A team must entertain but it also has to win,” he says.

For every Kaka in the team there is a more-disciplined team-mate, with Gilberto Silva playing his third World Cup.

“Gilberto is quiet, calm and does his work by helping his team-mates. He has an important role in the team tactically. He knows how to position himself and his team-mates on the pitch. He prefers to maintain his position on the pitch than get the crowd applauding him,” says Dunga.

It was according to this philosophy that Dunga chose to leave Ronaldinho behind in Milan, deciding not to risk any rebellion in his boot camp. For many Brazilian sports commentators Dunga’s ideas have been like a death sentence on their country’s famous fantasy football.

Only winning their sixth World Cup will justify such draconian methods.