Brazil was 45 minutes from one of its most embarrassing World Cup exits in decades on Monday before Carlo Ancelotti steadied the ship at halftime and his players came back to beat Japan 2-1 in Houston, advancing to the last 16.
Japan led at the break and had kept Brazil at arm's length through most of the first half. For a team that had not come from behind to win a World Cup knockout game since 2002, the situation was serious. Gabriel Martinelli scored late to seal the comeback.
Ancelotti, who took over as Brazil's coach and became the country's first foreign manager at a World Cup, said afterward he was never worried. "No. Not really. I was confident in our team," he said.
South American football expert Tim Vickery, speaking on BBC Radio 5 Live, described what had been at stake. "I would like to impress on you the size of the humiliation that this Brazil side were facing at half-time," Vickery said. "Brazil, for obvious reasons, they are traditionalist snobs. The idea of being knocked out, not in the quarter-final, but in the last 32 against a team from Asia."
Vickery added that Ancelotti's composure was central to the turnaround. "Sometimes Ancelotti's greatest ability is to do nothing. An oasis of calm in all the chaos around him - and it has paid off again."
The only change Ancelotti made at halftime was forced upon him: Endrick replaced the injured Lucas Paqueta. The rest of the personnel stayed the same, but the second-half performance was sharply different. Ancelotti acknowledged his team had "ran into some trouble" against a well-organized Japan side but backed his players to work through it. "Our team was out on the field. We were not lost like in the first half of Morocco," he said.
Ancelotti has won a record five Champions League titles as a club manager and has collected trophies in all five of Europe's major leagues. His record with Brazil now stands at nine wins from his first 15 games in charge.
Brazil will face either Ivory Coast or Norway in the round of 16.
