For Tim Vickery, the answer was never straightforward. Brazil had invested heavily in Ancelotti, financially and politically, but the failure in North America exposed precisely the questions that had surrounded his appointment: whether a coach renowned for managing established teams could build a new one, and whether his pragmatism would be enough for a football nation demanding transformation.
“It's a little bit like Thomas Tuchel with England,” Vickery tells Football Presse. “You've brought him in to be able to take those decisions. Now, his side were not a possession-based side, and that was a huge problem when they lost. It's never a huge problem when they win.”
That distinction has shaped much of Ancelotti’s relationship with Brazil. The Italian’s methods were accepted when the results improved, but the World Cup defeat left every decision open to scrutiny. His selection, his substitutions and his handling of Neymar became part of the argument over whether Brazil had chosen the right man for the job.
Yet Ancelotti avoided the sack.
The reasons, Vickery believes, extend beyond the coach himself. Brazil had only recently committed to him through 2030, making dismissal an expensive admission of failure. There is also a practical problem: the national team has relatively few competitive fixtures before the next World Cup.
“Brazil had just given him a big contract, and that makes it financially costly,” Vickery says. “And then you've got the uncertainty of the next four years because there aren't that many proper games. You've got the Copa America in two years, and until then you're playing friendlies.”
The first test of the new cycle will come against Australia in September, followed by India in October. Brazil’s first post-World Cup squad contains 26 players, including eight debutants and ten selected from clubs in the domestic championship. It is a clear attempt at renewal, but it also gives Ancelotti time rather than immediate competitive judgement.
That protection will not last indefinitely.
“If Brazil do badly in the Copa America, then Ancelotti's position could become unsustainable,” Vickery says. “Until then, he has the friendlies. But the pressure is still there, because Brazil doesn't just want a coach who gets them through games. They want to know what the project is.”
That is where Vickery sees the greatest uncertainty.
“You always see Ancelotti as a coach who works with what he's got. He's not a big ideas man. What have we got? What are we going to do with it? And that has worked wonderfully well for him throughout his career.”
The problem is that Brazil may now need something different. The country’s midfield has deteriorated, its full-backs have become increasingly difficult to develop, and its production line no longer enjoys the advantage it once held over the rest of the world.
“Now Brazil needs a long-term project and a change,” Vickery says. “Ancelotti has identified central midfield as the area where the biggest change is needed. But he has never really been a long-term ideas man. He's normally very good at handling egos and making a team function. From a lemon he makes lemonade.”
That quality helped explain why the CBF wanted him. Brazil had run out of convincing domestic alternatives, while recent improvements in the country’s football had often come under foreign coaches, particularly Portuguese managers. Ancelotti offered authority, experience and the ability to manage a dressing room containing some of the biggest personalities in world football.
But the World Cup exposed the limitations of that approach.
Vickery remains particularly astonished by Ancelotti’s decision to bring Neymar into the game against Norway. He had previously believed the coach had handled the Neymar situation with unusual intelligence.
“At the call-up, it was a giant circus,” Vickery says. “And Ancelotti seemed to be thinking, ‘I know it's a circus, but I control it.’ Neymar wasn't physically ready. He'd come on against Scotland when Brazil had already won, and he looked far off the pace.
“I thought Ancelotti was giving people what they wanted. He was saying, ‘Look, Neymar's here, he's been involved, but I'm not going to use him again unless it's late in a game we've already won.’ And then he brought him on against Norway. I still can't understand it.”
For Vickery, the decision was more than a questionable substitution. It suggested that Ancelotti, despite all his experience, had been drawn into the emotional pressure surrounding Brazil’s most famous footballer.
“Neymar is surrounded by a sect,” he says. “There are people in Brazil who genuinely believe he should have started, and former players saying Brazil didn't use him enough. What fascinates me is how Ancelotti and Paul Clement became kidnapped by this pro-Neymar sect.
“I would love to know how that happened, because until then Ancelotti had handled it wonderfully. He had understood that Neymar wasn't physically ready. He had seen what happened against Scotland. Then suddenly, in the biggest game, he gives in to the pressure.”
That pressure is intensified by the way Brazil treats its football stars. Vickery believes Neymar has become a symbol of expectations that are almost impossible for any player to satisfy.
“He was given two jobs,” Vickery says. “Win Brazil the World Cup and win the Ballon d'Or. Anything less was failure. And I think Neymar never learned to lose emotionally.”
The same emotional demands now surround Ancelotti. Brazil expects results, but it also expects an explanation for why those results have become increasingly difficult to achieve. The coach’s calm public manner has helped him survive, particularly because he has made a determined effort to communicate in Portuguese and show respect for domestic football.
“His PR was exceptional,” Vickery says. “And doing media in Portuguese works on two levels. It's great PR, but Portuguese also limits what he can say. The job of the Brazil coach is to talk without saying very much quite often.
“He really tries, though. Some Argentine coaches in Brazil do everything in Spanish, but Ancelotti has made the effort. And he goes to Brazilian games. He shows respect for domestic football. Those things matter.”
There was also a period before the World Cup when Vickery could imagine Ancelotti succeeding. Brazil had played well against Norway for much of the match, missed a penalty and squandered a one-on-one opportunity through Endrick. The result, in his view, obscured how small the margins had been.
“Before that substitution, I could imagine Brazil beating Norway, England and Argentina,” he says. “I couldn't imagine them beating Spain or France in the final because of the midfield weakness. But the lines between success and failure in World Cups are so, so small.
“Had Ancelotti not made that substitution, I could imagine Brazil reaching the final. That's how fine the margins were.”
That argument may help explain why the CBF chose continuity rather than another managerial upheaval. But it also places a greater burden on Ancelotti: he must now demonstrate that the defeat was not simply the consequence of one bad decision, but part of a process capable of producing a better team.
Brazil’s new squad suggests he understands the urgency. Veterans including Casemiro and Neymar have been left out, while young players from the domestic game have been given opportunities. The attack remains built around Vinícius Júnior, Raphinha, Endrick and Estêvão, but the midfield and defensive selections point towards a wider search for alternatives.
The challenge, however, is not merely to discover new players.
“Ancelotti has to deal with the lack of rationality around Neymar, but he also has to deal with the lack of rationality around Brazilian football generally,” Vickery says. “There is a lot of emotion, a lot of history and a lot of expectation. And Brazil has to learn again that success is a process.
“If you forget that success is a process and just think it's a natural birthright, that's when you stop being successful.”
Ancelotti survived because the CBF still believes his experience can take Brazil towards 2030. The pressure now is to prove that he can do more than manage the consequences of failure.
Brazil needs a coach capable of building something new. Whether Ancelotti can become that coach remains the biggest question of the new cycle.
Tim Vickery's book "Mundials: A South American History of the World Cup" is from Pitch Publishing - which is available here.
