Luiz Henrique, the most outstanding student in the exam that Carlo Ancelotti gave to Brazil at the Maracanã

Almost effortlessly, but also without brilliance, Brazil closed out their home qualifying campaign with a 3-0 win over what was by far the continent's worst team . An experimental Chilean side proved hardly a match, but even so, Carlo Ancelotti's team couldn't muster a solid recovery that would allow them to join the ranks of favorites for next year's tournament.

Having completed the World Cup qualification process, Carletto showed he was on trial . This was evident from his selection, in which he left out most of those he knows best—Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo, and even Militao—and left out Neymar, despite complaints from the faded Santos star. He gave the opportunity to showcase himself to a mix of young players, unusual veterans, and players who either play locally or have recently emigrated to Europe.

Whether or not he was satisfied with what he saw will be seen in the friendlies remaining until the North American tournament. What's certain is that he'll have Luiz Henrique, the striker who was a key figure in last year's Copa Libertadores final, defeated by Botafogo at the Monumental stadium, on his final list.

The Italian coach brought him into the game at 21 minutes into the second half, when the spectacle was fading and whistles were becoming the ambient sound in the Maracaná, and in less than ten minutes, the left-footer did much more than all his teammates combined to shake his team and the fans out of their lethargy.

Brazil were already leading 1-0 before halftime, more due to a specific force than a convincing performance, when the man now with Zenit in Russia invented a run down the left, using only braking and feinting, and launched a poisoned cross that Lucas Paquetá —who had just come on—headed into the net. A short while later, he dribbled down the right and shot over the goalkeeper's exit. The crossbar denied him, but Bruno Guimaraes arrived to make it three.

Aside from this last-minute appearance, from a neutral perspective, some traits could be seen that could be encouraging for the Italian coach, but those that have long been lacking in the Brazilian national team's football prevailed, and they seem impossible to fix in the blink of an eye, no matter how much experience and success the coach has accumulated.

Chile's weaknesses limit any analysis (in the opening stretch, Alisson Becker touched the ball first for a goal kick in the 43rd minute), but there are still issues that hinder a radical improvement in the Verde-Amarelha's performance. The first, and fundamental, is the lack of a player who combines the talent and vision to drive the attacking game.

This time, Ancelotti fielded two natural midfielders—Casemiro and Bruno Guimaraes , the two best players of the night—and four men ahead of them. The brief was for Rafinha to act as a linkman and for Joao Pedro to drop back to participate in the build-up work, but both he and Estevao and Martinelli are built as finishing forwards and lack the necessary fine-tuning to make the ball run fluidly, or to find gaps in tight defenses and thread in advantageous passes. Suffice it to say that Casemiro, a renowned blocking midfielder, was the one who initiated all of his team's attacking actions in the first half, a role that has never been a defining characteristic of his career.

Chile recognized themselves as a vastly inferior opponent from the very beginning. They deployed a 5-4-1 formation that effectively stacked seven or eight defenders around or inside their own penalty area, with the sole mission of limiting the home side's ability to put one of their forwards one-on-one with the opposing goalkeeper and block any shots that might follow. The tactic, in any case, was sufficient to expose the obvious gaps in the current Brazil.

The first 45 minutes played out in that dynamic. The five-time world champions always had the ball in their possession, and at times they ran with pace and a certain sense of purpose, but they barely managed a few clear shots. Two headers, one from Gabriel deflected by debutant goalkeeper Lawrence Vigouroux and another that ended in a goal for Casemiro , which was ruled out for offside. It wasn't until the 37th minute that Joao Pedro and Douglas Santos put together a move that Ancelotti must have imagined. The 31-year-old left-back, who has been with Zenit for seven seasons, made the cut for the free-running Rafinha, who shot across the net, Vigouroux made the best of his ability to block it, and Estevao, two steps from the line and with a half-bike, opened the scoring.

The other weakness Brazil hinted at also relates to the 4-2-4 formation that strips out the midfield . Chile, also in the testing phase but looking toward the distant horizon of 2030, with an interim coach (Nicolás Córdova), without any members of the Golden Generation, and too many debutants, rarely managed to string together several consecutive passes, but when they did, they found very little opposition from the home side.

For a simple matter of numbers, depopulating the midfield in this way means losing options for recovery, and while the poor performance of La Roja prevented Alisson from experiencing any major scares, it's worth asking what will happen when he faces opponents who focus their power on dominating that area of ​​the field . The memory of the drubbing Argentina inflicted on him a few months ago in Buenos Aires should prompt Carletto to reflect deeply if he intends to travel to the World Cup with a real chance of being the favorite.

The Maracanã enjoyed a quiet night of testing. In the exam Ancelotti set, some students earned good grades, such as Casemiro and Bruno Guimaraes ; others will have to keep studying, such as João Pedro and Martinelli. And one who surely earned the highest score. It was Luiz Henrique, and just for the moment of magic he offered when the match was starting to get boring, the Brazilian fans may have left thinking it had been worth the trip to the Maracanã to close out their team's quiet World Cup knockout stage.

• Qualifiers
• Brazil national team
• Chilean national team

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