Perhaps the most remarkable thing about Dunga’s Brazil is how similar they are, in terms of personnel, at least, to Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Brazil.
The 7-1 defeat to Germany in the World Cup semi-final was a result whose consequences will linger on as a distant trauma.
Just as the repercussions of the defeat to Uruguay in the final game of the 1950 World Cup continue to be felt and perhaps contributed to the over-emotionalism of the hosts last summer.
The temptation must have been for wholesale changes, to discard a team and start again, but it is conceivable that the team that starts against Peru in Brazil’s first game of the Copa America in June will feature seven of Scolari’s regulars.
The reappointment of Dunga was not universally welcomed.
As a player, even as he captained Brazil to the 1994 World Cup, he was seen as un-Brazilian, a glum workhorse at the back of midfield, a betrayal of the great tradition.
As a coach, dour, pragmatic and functional, he was no better. Yet, perhaps his stolidity was just what Brazil needed, a calming voice, a clear thinker to cut through the hysteria.
There have been changes.
The goalkeeper Julio Cesar, at 35, has been discarded with Jefferson of Botafogo and Valencia’s Diego Alves contesting the position.
Dani Alves has been replaced at right-back by Porto’s Danilo. The centre-forward Fred, so derided during the World Cup, has retired from international football (jumping before he was pushed, many would say), with Luiz Adriano, Diego Tardelli and Roberto Firmino jockeying to be first choice.
That there is still place for a centre-forward is itself significant.
Dunga has stuck to the 4-2-3-1/4-2-2-2 hybrid favoured by Scolari, with Neymar pushing on, often from the left, to join a central striker, and Oscar and Willian, preferred these days to Hulk, in support.
There had been a thought that Neymar might be used as a false nine, which perhaps could have opened a position for Philippe Coutinho to come in on the left, but Dunga hinted at how little he had seen him play when he erroneously remarked recently that Liverpool play a 4-4-2.
Dunga’s preference, anyway, is for something more orthodox. His first spell as manager brought a victory in the 2007 Copa America, but the disappointment of a quarter-final exit to the Netherlands at the 2010 World Cup means his reign tends to be regarded as a failure.
He has preferred a 4-2-3-1 formation, and it was in a holding midfield pair that he thrived as a player. That platform at the back of midfield remains central to Dunga’s thinking.
Paulinho, who started the World Cup for Scolari, has been culled.
His preferred duo seems to be Luis Gustavo and Fernandinho, although Elias of Corinthians started against France in the 3-1 friendly victory in Paris on Thursday.
That game was also notable for the return to the squad of the left-back Marcelo, whose reckless forward sorties were widely blamed for precipitating the collapse against Germany.
Dunga, intriguingly, used him as a second-half substitute in central midfield, keeping the far more defensive Filipe Luis at left-back, but given he played for only a few minutes it is probably best not to read much into that.
The other player often blamed for the semi-final defeat was David Luiz, and he missed out on Thursday with Miranda, a Dunga favourite, partnering Thiago Silva.
Dunga has used all three at times and there is no sense that David Luiz has been sidelined; He is likely to start against Chile at Arsenal’s Emirates Stadium today.
The sense of continuity may have come as a surprise, but it is working.
Seven games as coach have brought seven victories, a statistic no doubt helped by the focusing of minds brought about by the calamitous end to the World Cup.
There is a determination and a purpose about Dunga’s Brazil, the pragmatism that made him so unpopular by the end of his first spell as national coach perhaps exactly what was needed to help them get over the trauma of Belo Horizonte.
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