I've watched the (much better) teams from 1998 to about 2014 achieve absolutely nothing so I have no hope in this current crop of retards. I don't know why so many people keep getting carried away with unwarranted optimism. Happy to be proven wrong though.
I know that feel, sort of.
We win the very cupcake-filled qualifiers, usually go far in Copa América whenever we don't win it either, and trounce almost any team on friendlies. Not to mention the goddamn Confederations Cup, which Brazil always won because they were literally the only ones who took it seriously. The hype on our NT proceeds to go up the wazoo, we start to believe "this time we'll bring it home for sure, it's the best team since God knows when", we paint our streets with the national colors, so on and so forth. Then something happens that the team just doesn't deliver for one reason or another.
In 2006, we had an incredibly stacked team, coached by the guy who won the fourth title in 1994. We won the Copa América in 2004 and the Confederations Cup in 2005 beating powerhouses like Argentina and hosts Germany. How could we not win it? The boys proceed to make little case, prefer partying and fooling around, had everyone wondering "where is that amazing team we saw in the latest years" and end up being chewed and spit out by France.
In 2010, a mostly-renewed roster and a coach (Dunga) who decided to ditch our usual attacking style for something more truncated and relying on defending and counterstriking tactics. It was ugly and boring, but it brought excellent results. Once more, we won the Copa América in 2007, made short work of pretty much everyone in the Qualifiers, and won the Confederations Cup. Things went mostly smoothly for a change, up until half-time of the match against the Netherlands. Then something happened, they choked hard, dumbfuck Felipe Melo gets expelled because he is a dumbfuck, the strategy goes to shit, and we are exposed once more as an incredibly limited team that depended solely on those specific players and those specific conditions to win. If one or another wasn't met, the team sucked hard.
In 2014, it was a mess and a half, with players with the mental aplomb of toddlers and this big feeling that this is
our Cup, because it was held in
our country, therefore everybody else should just get bent and hand us the trophy ASAP. As a result, they almost shit the bed against fucking Mexico and Chile, and then came
that game against Germany. This should have been a turning point for the NT as a whole, but it was all smoke and mirrors.
In 2018, we finally got to see good players and some semblance of fun footy being played by our side. Tite might be stubborn as a mule, but as long as he raked in good results and had our first long-term plan in God knows how long, we didn't mind. Not playing the final edition of the Confederations Cup and not winning the latest Copa América editions helped greatly to diminish the unnecessary hubris. Then came the WC and the team suddenly stopped delivering. Imagine spending 90 minutes against fucking Costa Rica without managing to score a single one up until the extra time.
And now in 2022, the supposed culmination of the mentioned long-term plan to earn the Hexa, this was perhaps the easiest path our team ever had to reach the finals and they all knew it, so they fucked off to eat gold-sprinkled steaks in Doha and practiced dance moves for goal-scoring celebrations instead of studying better tactics to neutralize the strongest opponents. Once again, the very first decent team they face gets them shot down in the most absurd way possible - With the game in the bag, but boldly going so far ahead you didn't leave some fucking defenders for an eventual countering effort. And not even bothering with the order of scorers for the penalty shootout. Why didn't fucking Neymar, arguably the best penalty shooter in the World today, not go first? Was that his own decision or was that Tite's? Whatever, we lost, Tite got sacked, half this team will no longer play for the NT (You'll forget all about Lucas Paquetá and Gabriel Jesus in two or three years) and we have no idea as to who could coach us for the 2026 campaign.
If we were smart, we'd never fall for the hype on the NT that our local media incenses every time World Cup time comes around. Then again, if we were smart, we'd never elect once more a corrupt piece of shit who drove this country to a hole it refuses to come out of. In four years time, the streets will be painted and decorated with the national colors once more, and the result will most likely be the same. We'll be left wondering what went wrong, start all over, get the same results, lather, rinse, repeat. We are insane, and our following of the NT is a reflex on our general attitudes as a country.
Thank you for coming to my TED talk. I'll be here all night.