Cafu was the captain of Brazil’s fifth World Cup in 2002 and is currently the ambassador for the upcoming tournament in Qatar next year.
The former right-back spoke to UOL Esporte, and with the World Cup a little over a year away, he discussed the early favorites to lift the trophy.
“They are great teams with outstanding players. They will be very hard to beat in 2022, so it’s hard to pick a clear favorite right now,” Cafu said.
Cafu then touched on his country, Brazil, which continues to search for the sixth World Cup, and spoke about the recent call-ups who will be part of the squad. The national team further distance themselves from the CONMEBOL nations and carry this momentum into next year’s tournament.
“It’s obvious that Brazil can improve in many aspects and I think the team will continue to evolve until next year’s World Cup. We still have a little more than a year until then, which is plenty of time to correct some mistakes and improve some parts of their game. I think that offensively Brazil is very strong, so if we improve defensively a little bit, we will arrive very well in Qatar,” Cafu said.
Furthermore, the former defender stated that something is missing on this Brazil national team, which did lose to Argentina in the Copa America this summer at home in Rio de Janerio. Tite’s squad failed to score a goal as they fell and gave their rival its first international title in over 20-plus years.
“I thought Argentina deserved to win. They faced their toughest opponent and biggest arch-rivals in the final, which is Brazil, which on top of that was playing at home. The Argentines played with a very compact team and didn’t concede many goals, which made a lot of difference,” Cafu said.
“I also thought that Brazil had a great competition and would have been another fair champion, but in the end, the title went to Messi and Argentina. As for the other teams, I think they had average or bad performances, in my opinion, and the two best teams reached the final.”