Despite coming away with a 3-1 victory over Venezuela, the Brazil national team saw criticism for its play in Caracas.
Venezuela opened up the scoring early in the match and held onto the 1-0 lead for most of the fixture. However, nearing the end, it seemed as though they ran out of gas, and Brazil capitalized on having superior talent.
Brazil would score three straight goals but couldn’t escape the poor play for most of the match, which could be due to the absence of Neymar Jr. from the starting eleven.
Ahead of their matchup in Barranquilla against Colombia, manager Tite spoke to the media at his press conference, where AS relayed his comments on having Neymar back. Nonetheless, the Brazilian tactician stated that some changes are coming to the lineup.
“Neymar is back, yes, but I do not anticipate it. Other changes will take place. In the last game, we had a time zone of 7:00 for many athletes,” Tite said. “It is not an excuse, but it has a performance oscillation caused by it. Imagine that you have breakfast, lunch, everything out of order (…) But now we are going to reward fully recovered athletes.”
Meanwhile, Colombia will look for the three points as they continue to push for one of the automatic qualifying spots as they’re two points behind Uruguay.