For Tim Vickery, who has covered Brazilian football for decades, that regeneration cannot be separated from a much bigger question: what happened to the country that once seemed to own football?
Brazil’s first squad since the 2026 World Cup includes several of the survivors from Ancelotti’s failed campaign, alongside a group of younger players who will now be asked to carry the weight of a football culture that has been waiting 24 years for another World Cup.
And Vickery believes that wait has changed the way Brazil sees itself.
“It's a huge disappointment," he tells Football Presse. "I remember it's now 24 years and it's now going to be 28 years. That's the longest that they've ever had. So you get a support base which is both spoiled by success and frustrated by the lack of success at the same time.
“Because expectations were formed in those years between '58 and '70 when they won three out of four World Cups and established themselves as the country of football. And that is the permanent expectation. That's reality. That's what things should be like. So it's an immense frustration that they haven't been like that for so long.”
That history remains both inspiration and burden.
Vickery arrived in Brazil shortly after the 1994 World Cup, when the country had just won its fourth title, and watched the success of that side become a template for an entire generation.
“I came over just after they'd won in 1994. And that team, that 1994 team, which I think was a very good team, it was a very, very well-balanced team, but it was striking that everyone used that as a model. Everyone.
“So everyone played the same 4-4-2, but where the national team had Mauro Silva and a Dunga who had worked a lot on his passing game, and Dunga in '94 is a different player from Dunga in '90. A lot of them were essentially playing centre-backs in front of the centre-backs.”
For Vickery, that mentality helped create one of the problems Ancelotti has now identified: Brazil no longer produces enough complete central midfielders.
The issue goes deeper than tactics. He believes Brazilian football became increasingly shaped by the need to win immediately rather than develop players for the future.
“One of my favourite figures, if you've read the book, Zizinho, who was the best player of the 1950 World Cup, and he wrote his own book with no help in '85. And the last paragraph is a warning.
“This is before the opening up of the European market, because there's a tendency to blame Europe for everything. He's saying what we're doing in Brazil, we are transforming the holding midfielder. He is a player who has 60% of his team's play in possession in his hands, like a Rodri, for example. And this player should be a constructive player.
“And in Brazil, we have transformed him into a player who only destroys. And what that has a lot to do with, and this I think is a huge problem, is the lack of job security for coaches.
“Lose three games and you're out. So what do you do? You just make sure you don't lose.”
That pressure is felt even more strongly in youth football, where Vickery sees another distortion.
“The youth coaches quite often don't get paid very much. So what they're looking to do is win games in order to win a promotion out of youth football and into senior football where they can earn more money.
“So they take shortcuts. And what's the biggest shortcut in youth football? Just go with height.
“So you've got these giant centre-backs and they'll score you goals from corners and free kicks. They'll get you goals. They can't play. And you look at a lot of Brazil sides, under-17, under-20 sides, the centre-backs are these giants and you never hear of them again.”
Yet Vickery is not predicting Brazilian football's decline.
Quite the opposite. He sees a country still producing extraordinary talent, but operating in a world where its old advantages have been eroded.
“They're still producing, but part of the problem is so much of the rest of the world is also producing in a way that maybe, you know, because there's money to be made from the production of footballers.
“So now the whole world is being scoured for footballers. And there are problems with player production in Brazil, and I think it has to do with, in the big urban centres, the loss of the street.”
That may be the biggest change Vickery has witnessed during his time in Brazil.
“The street footballer, if you're thin and skilful, it is a matter of survival to know when to get rid of the ball, when to pass the ball and when to go for the dribble.
“But these days they are hothoused from the age of eight. They're not normal anymore.”
The loss of those spaces has forced futsal to take on a greater role, but Vickery does not believe it can fully replace what came before.
“Some would argue that futsal is Brazil's big secret. I don't see it that way. I think futsal is probably necessary, but it's an inadequate substitute for the great original secret, which was the Brazilian street.”
That is why the new generation will have to do more than simply live up to the old one.
Vickery believes Brazil's footballing identity has to evolve — and Ancelotti's greatest challenge may be persuading the country that its past is not a blueprint for its future.
“I always think there's part of the trap of success is that you forget that success is always a process. And when you forget that success is a process and you just think it's a natural birthright, that's when you stop being successful.
“And I think that's one thing that happened to Brazilian football.
“It got mentally lazy.”