During the international break, Brazil’s U23 team have played a couple of friendly matches as they prepare for the pre-olympic tournament in Colombia in January.
Globo Esporte has a story about the squad today, saying the CBF are a little worried since clubs aren’t forced to give their players to the national team for such an event.
Now despite the issue for this qualificatory tournament, Brazil should have a stronger squad once they get to the Olympics. And that could, perhaps, include Everton’s Richarlison.
Globo Esporte lists a bunch of players who are well known and could still be part of U23 squad. That includes Manchester City’s Gabriel Jesus, Everton’s Richarlison, Real Madrid’s Éder Militão and Vinícius Júnior, Milan’s Lucas Paquetá, Ajax’s David Neres and Flamengo’s Gerson.
All of them have been getting chances for the first team, but are still young enough to help Brazil at the Olympics in Tokyo next year.
But something that Globo Esporte appears to be ignoring is that there’s also a Copa America being played next year. And it seems quite unlikely that Richarlison would be playing both tournaments.
Back in 2016, Barcelona only gave Neymar the chance to play the Olympics, keeping him out of the Copa America. At that time, Brazil’s priority was to win the U23 tournament, which was being played at home.
Richarlison is an important player for the first team this days, and with Tite going with full strengh for the Copa America, it sounds unlikely he would just give the player away to the Olympic squad.
Now could Brazil really try to have him in both? We wonder how Everton would react to that.
