Is Fifa favouring Brazil?

The Manchester United-bound coach has taken exception to the scheduling of the last group matches on Monday (in Brazil), suggesting that Fifa scheduled ‘Group B’ matches ahead of the ‘Group A’ matches so that Brazil could choose which team to play in the round of 16 by manipulating their result against Cameroon.

Brazil played their last ‘Group A’ match four hours after Van Gaal’s Dutch team kicked off against Chile in Sao Paulo. And, that, he accused, gave Brazil fair idea who they would face if they top the group or otherwise.

Known to be touchy, Van Gaal claimed that the scheduling flew in the face of Fifa’s message of ‘fair play’ at the World Cup. Speaking to media before their last ‘Group B’ match against Chile in Brazil, he also pointed out that Fifa, for every match, have this advertisement around fair play, but they play these ‘tricks’ and it is not a good thing, it is ‘not fair play’.

The Holland coach wanted to know why on earth Fifa were playing with the fixtures. He went on to say that he can well imagine that Brazil wanted to avoid facing Holland because the Dutch were on a scoring spree, including some spectacular strikes.

Well, some believe that Fifa may have favoured Brazil because they want to keep violent protesters at arm’s length. Whatever that may be, Van Gaal has stirred up a Hornet’s Nest. So, obviously Brazil’s European coach Luiz Felipe Scolari (he holds Italian citizenship also) would not keep quiet. He called Van Gaal’s accusations ‘stupid or malicious’.

He reiterated that the task at hand for his boys was to win and progress and there was no other thinking about what was ‘Group B’ position.

He is right in a way because a defeat could have spelled an early exit for Brazil. While Brazil was playing Cameroon, Mexico was locked in a battle with Croatia. Had Croatia won and Brazil lost, three teams would have finished with same four points and possibly Brazil would have made an early exit.

Ergo, Brazil had no option but to win their match against Cameroon and top the group. Scolari rightly said that his team had no option because if they had lost, they may not have gone through. For them, it was not a question of choosing anyone but winning.

And, in the World Cup a team needs to get past every opponent that they come across in the draw. At the Brazil Finals there have been no lesser teams. Iran, Costa Rica and to some extent Chile have been unafraid to take on the so called mighty giants and the ranked teams were also rattled at times.

The match timings were such that it made sense to keep ‘Group A’ matches later in the day so the Brazilian fans could come to the stadium to watch their home team after the day’s work. Crafty Van Gaal knows that a team needs to win all their matches to win the most coveted sporting trophy in the world.

Fifa may or may not be playing ‘dirty tricks’ but the Dutch coach could be playing mind games with Brazil before the two could meet ahead in the quadrennial tournament. It was much ado about nothing but gave media enough bites to chew on.