Parreira turns Brazil into Bafana

It's cheeky, but one could suggest that Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and his assistant, Carlos Parreira, have got Brazil playing like Bafana Bafana at this World Cup.

With a 4-5-1 formation that at times resembles the in-vogue 4-3-3 in attack, utilising two defensive midfielders, playing possession football against inferior line-ups, Brazil have looked far-from finalist material in a tournament set alight by the likes of Holland, Germany, Chile and Costa Rica.

Monday night's 4-1 win against the Cameroon disgrace should not get their fans' hopes up.

In fairness Brazil are a serious improvement on the cows Dunga brought to South Africa four years ago. That was a rigid and uncompromising team moulded in the former bullish defensive midfielder's own image, who were rightly punished by Holland in the Port Elizabeth quarter-final.

Brazil in this World Cup have been out to exorcise the ghost of 1950. It is the demon of that most impossible of all defeats to Uruguay in the decisive match of a bizarre final round-robin stage in front of 175 000 people at the Maracana, that seems to continue to shape Brazilian football.

The demons were supposed to have been expelled by the rampant success of the Pele-inspired Selecao in winning in 1958 in Sweden, 1962 in Chile, and then with their greatest triumph in 1970 in Mexico, possessing perhaps the greatest attacking line-up of all time.

But the failings of beautiful football for 24 years after that – despite the genius of Socrates, Zico, Falcao, Eder, Branco and Careca, who could not break down rigid 1980s patterns – brought back the haunting.

Until, of course, Parreira created the first pragmatic Brazil ever that won in USA 1994 and set the tone for the era where Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho would provide the creativity within a rigid framework that brought the fifth World Cup trophy under Scolari in 2002.

In Japan and Korea, Brazil qualified from their group with nine points to Turkey's four, where wins by 4-0 against China and 5-2 against Costa Rica (then nowhere near the fearless force they have been in this tournament) led to a +8 goal difference.

Their path to the 2-0 final win against Germany, spearheaded by Ronaldo's eight tournament goals, was fairly standard – 2-0 vs Belgium, 2-1 vs England, 1-0 vs Turkey.

But in 2014 Scolari and Parreira's practical football has looked out of place in a front foot World Cup, where there really are almost no minnows.

Returning to the glory of Brazil in the 1950s to 1970 period is not practical in a modern age where the pace of the game is frenetic, with a largely inexperienced squad that has only six players who played in the previous World Cup, and where Neymar is clearly a developing force.

But with a few tweaks, Brazil could be a more creative and threatening combination.

Replacing unimpressive battering ram Hulk with a more expressive wide forward such as Bernard or Willian would be a start. If Scolari is set on two defensive midfielders, then should he not follow the current international trend of playing one more creative player slightly ahead of the other?

Cameroon would have been the game to experiment. Spain have already given a taste of what can happen to a giant when caught between two minds in playing style at this competition. Chile will savage the Selecao like they did La Roja in Saturday's second round match in Belo Horizonte if Scolari does not get things right.

The ghoul that haunts them really could lead to the Selecao's downfall. It's forced Brazil into a corner of conservatism bred since Parreira's 1994 victory, in a World Cup where the Costa Ricas and Chiles, and even unheralded Iran, don't give a damn about reputation. With home ground advantage, of course, and the experience of the Scolari-Parreira combination, they could also well continue picking a measured and cautious path all the way to the final and the trophy.

Brazil would celebrate, but, as we do in South African football, also hanker back to a previous, more romantic and beautiful age.