Glorious climax: Brazil’s Fluminense players celebrate with the trophy after winning the Copa Libertadores final against Argentina’s Boca Juniors at the Maracana in rio de Janeiro on Nov 4. Fluminense won 2-1. — AP
THE story starts with a message. Everything that has followed and everything that might yet – the glory and the acclaim, the opportunity and the revolution – has unspooled from a simple text. Everyone involved can agree on that. What is not entirely clear, though, is precisely which message was the one that counted.
The official version runs like this. One night in April last year, coach Fernando Diniz sent a message to Mario Bittencourt, the president of Fluminense, one of the traditional giants of Brazilian football.
It was not the usual modus operandi for Diniz: In more than a decade as a manager, he had tended to wait for clubs to come to him. It was a point of professional pride.
In this case, though, he was prepared to make an exception. Fluminense had just fired their coach. Diniz had both played for and managed the team already, and he had fond memories of his time working with Bittencourt, a 45-year-old lawyer. In his heart, he said, he felt that “the time was right to return.”
His message – one full of “shyness, reflection and a very pure feeling,” as Diniz put it, found a receptive audience.
“He was the one I wanted, but we hadn’t spoken yet,” Bittencourt told the Brazilian news outlet Globo. He put the coincidence down to an “exchange of energy,” one that was too portentous to ignore. Diniz got the job.
There is, though, another version of the story, based on another message.
“It’s funny, because my wife and I hardly discuss work at all,” Bittencourt said. Not just his legal practice, “but Fluminense, too, and she is a passionate fan.”
That evening, though, she had sent him a message, too. It read, simply: “Diniz, Diniz, Diniz.”
The mastermind: Coach Fernando Dini had led Fluminense to the Rio de Janeiro state championship — ahead of their fierce rivals, Flamengo — to claim the first title of his coaching career. — AFP
Given what has happened since, it is easy to see why Bittencourt prefers to believe his decision was defined by some ineffable universal force. In April this year, Diniz led Fluminense to the Rio de Janeiro state championship – ahead of their fierce rival, Flamengo to claim the first title of his coaching career.
Last Saturday, Fluminense edged Boca Juniors, the Argentine behemoth, 2-1 in the final of the Copa Libertadores, South America’s most prestigious club championship. Ten Brazilian teams have conquered the continent at one point or another over the last 60 years. Fluminense are now among them.
Diniz’s impact, though, may yet extend far beyond the power dynamics of Brazilian domestic football. Just as significant as what Fluminense have achieved under his aegis is the way that it has done it, playing a sort of football that has come to be seen – both in South America and further afield – as a vision of the future.
As is inevitable, a rich vocabulary has been used to describe the style of play pioneered by Diniz’s team. It varies in usefulness from the merely unwieldy to the actively unhelpful: there is “relationism” and “anti-positional” and, sufficiently evocative to warrant italicisation rather than quotation marks, Dinizismo.
What it is all trying to express is this: In the schools of thought that dominate elite football, the abiding principle is that the field is defined and dominated by positions.
Players blend into whatever role the moment demands. Instead of placing the emphasis on a tightly-defined structure, the framework is much looser.
Individuals are encouraged to solve problems as they see them, to invent solutions, to cluster around the ball as tightly as possible, even if that runs the risk of leaving other areas of the field undermanned. It is, according to the Brazil forward Matheus Cunha, a style that it would be “impossible” to see in European football.
To Diniz, it is an approach that is particularly suited to Brazilian players, who are raised not just on the improvisational style of street football but also futsal, the small-sided game that offers many of them their first experiences in the sport. Dinizismo is jogo bonito in the age of analytics.
The reason both Cunha and Rodrygo have opinions on this is testament to the impression Diniz has made.
Fluminense finished a creditable third in Brazil’s top flight last season – scoring 63 goals, a total surpassed only by the champions, Palmeiras – and have lagged only a little this year, doubtless distracted just a touch by the prospect of winning the Copa Libertadores.
But Diniz has won so many hearts and minds that earlier this year, he was placed in temporary control of the Brazilian national team, at least in part because the players had lobbied on his behalf. (As early as July last year, Neymar, no less, had anointed Diniz one of the best coaches in the world on Instagram, the official platform for informed debate.)
Initial results, with Brazil, have been mixed: Diniz oversaw a simple win against Bolivia, a narrow one against Peru, a draw at home to Venezuela and a comprehensive loss to Uruguay.
A number of players have confessed that, in the brief, hurried intervals that constitute international football, it is not especially easy to internalise a whole new concept of how to play football.
If Diniz is to be considered a pioneer, the father of a school of thought, the author of a revolution, he needs something tangible, something concrete.
That might be the revival of the Brazilian national team. For the club, their first Copa Libertadores trophy represent the glorious climax to a story. But for the idea that has brought it there, it might just be a gleaming, shimmering start. — NYT
