Philippe Coutinho would walk into about 206 of the world's 209 national football squads. But because he's as Brazilian as a cold Skol, Coutinho is not a factor on the international front.
The 21-year-old has just one friendly cap to his name (awarded back in 2010 when he was barely potty-trained) and he will likely be on holiday during the World Cup.
Ahead of him in the queue of creative attackers are a teeming mob of sorcerers: Neymar, Oscar, Bernard and Willian. All Coutinho can do is carry on sparkling in Liverpool's apparently unstoppable charge towards title nirvana, and hope a gap appears in due course.
There may already be a strong case for Brazil coach Luiz Felipe Scolari to drop the unconvincing striker-winger Hulk in favour of Coutinho. But that would serve to overload his squad with playmakers, when what he really needs to complete a dazzling World Cup seleçao is a powerful, clinical centre forward. Neither Fred nor Jo nor any of the other contenders (Tom, Dick, Harry) can fill that old Ronaldo-shaped hole in Brazil's vanguard.
The current glut of Brazilian playmaking talent shouldn't surprise us. About 10 years ago, the rise of Ronaldinho reignited Brazil's old culture of extravagantly creative, free-form football. That culture had seemed to fade for much of the nineties, when some fairly pedestrian No10s (Silas, Rai, Leonardo) were redeemed and carried by a generation of matchless strikers (Bebeto, Romario, Ronaldo). Watching Carlos Alberto Parreira's 1994 World Cup-winning side was pretty hard work.
While Ronaldinho never fully expressed his gifts in a canary-yellow shirt, his charismatic influence has spawned a wave of brainy Brazilian brats. Neymar, Oscar, Willian and Coutinho are all perceptive, quick, inventive and disciplined: the latter three could probably score a bit more frequently, but other flaws are hard to identify.
Whereas Ronaldinho often overreached himself - whether by taking on one player too many, or one showgirl too many - these new maestros consistently strike a balance between the individual prerogative and the collective imperative. When they make mistakes, they make good mistakes.
Crucially, they grew up analysing the Uefa Champions League on TV, whereas earlier generations of Brazilian footballers were raised in a fairly insular culture. Before Brazil's post-millennial economic boom, the World Cup was the only global competition that all Brazilian kids watched with any regularity - their diet consisted of domestic leagues, the Copa America and the Copa Libertadores.
In the last decade, tens of millions of poor Brazilian families have entered the middle class, thanks in part to former President Lula da Silva's sensible but equitable economic policies. That has meant tens of millions of satellite dishes and broadband connections - and tens of millions of broader horizons, in football as well as politics.
The globalisation of televised football, especially the Champions League, has helped to forge a global style of elite football: it's beautiful, it's technical, it's often cynical, it's workaholic. Call it homogeneous if you like, but it's not boring.
It goes without saying that young South African footballers are not playing this style.
They can see it on the box, and they understand how it works, but they haven't been given the basic technical tools to execute it. Until that changes, we will only produce one Serero per decade - while Brazil pumps out fresh Coutinhos every six months.