The second part of the Copa America double header on Thursday evening comes from Rio de Janeiro as the tournament hosts Brazil continue their campaign against a side who start out their quest for the title in Peru.
Brazil opened up the tournament with a very comfortable win and will be looking to back that up with another here and assume control of the group. Peru probably don’t have a lot to lose here so they’ll be hoping to land a dent on the defending champions and gain some revenge for the 2019 final loss.
Brazil
We didn’t see Brazil at their very best in the opening match of the campaign but what we did get was a very assured performance, albeit against a Covid affected Venezuela side. The tests will get tougher for the defending champions from here on in and you suspect they will build their way through the gears with the aim of playing their best stuff deep into the latter stages of the competition. World Cup qualifying tells us they are very much the team to beat.
There weren’t too many scares for Brazil defensively against Venezuela but they might be tested a little more in this game so that is something to watch out for in this match. They are a joy to watch going forward though and as we saw in that opening game they have some frightening options off the bench regardless of which team they select. The only question really is how much they want to exert themselves at this stage of the competition.
Peru
The Peruvians gave their fans a lot to cheer two years ago when they reached the final before Brazil got the better of them in that title match. That generation is slowly coming to an end though and fresh faces need to be blooded and they have decided that with World Cup qualifying not going to plan, that this is the time to do it ahead of that competition resuming next season. They will know when it does that they need to be hitting a rich vein of form.
That has opened up accusations that they are sacking this tournament off but I don’t really see it like that. Only one side exits the competition from this section in the first stage so Peru probably only need one win to come out of it and get to take their chances in the knockout stages. With their campaign beginning with Brazil and then Colombia they have the chance to ease these new players in with little pressure on them to win before a couple of more winnable matches come along when they will need to be ready to do their thing.
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Team News
It will be interesting to see if Tite goes in with the same team for Brazil or whether he chooses to shuffle the pack a little bit. If he wants to shuffle his cards then Roberto Firmino and Gabriel Barbosa will be looking for starts.
Peru have left some big names at home for this competition including the influential Paolo Guerrero. Raul Ruidiaz is another one who has been left out and there are six potential debutants in the squad and four more with fewer than five caps so this will be an inexperienced side which takes the park.
Betting
I will be interested to see how Peru go in this match given the new boys they have in their squad. They still have experience in the key areas though so I don’t think they will be terrible or anything like that but at the same time they might be weaker, which isn’t a good sign if World Cup qualifying is anything to go by. I think this tournament is going to be a case of moving through the gears for Brazil and I expect them to be better than we saw against Venezuela and they were perfectly good enough in that game.
This just feels like a long night for Peru to me. They lack a real physical threat through the middle and if they can’t keep hold of the ball this might be one way traffic. If there is a criticism of Brazil it is that they are not always as clinical as we might like but they basically have two different front threes that they can field in this tournament and not be much weaker anywhere. That makes me think that Brazil -1.75 on the Asian lines will yield a return here.
Tips
Back Brazil (-1.75AH) to beat Peru for a 3/10 stake at 1.88 with BetVictor
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