For those of you who would be insterested on knowing a bit more about the Brazilian national team, I will explain a bit it´s recent history and a little bit about it´s players and coaches. I figure I should have done it earlier, but I didnt think that most people would ve followed it like they have.

I will start with the coach, Lula Ferreira:

As a coach in Brazil, won pretty much everything that could be won here. As is the case in countrys outside US, there´s usually more than one championship to play, including an by state, national, a little other smaller cups and ocasionally the sul-american championship. Commandin one of the best team in Brazil for a number of years,COC, that had Welington Reginaldo dos Santos, Nezinho and Alex Ribeiro Garcia, who both play today for the national team and another player, Renato Lamas Pinto who played on previous national teams and were part of the Big Three of COC. After years of domination on the Brazilian championships, Lula got the head coach job for the national team and is there since them, about 7 years, despite very poor results with that much talent.

Personal opinion: At first I was very excited about Lula being Brazil´s coach. I hated with passion Brazil national team previous coach, and Lula´s teams were always known for being great defensive teams, something that Brazil national team was never known for. He basically wanted the team to play heavy defense, including full court pressure at times, play a running game, and when not possible, start an offense inside-out. Perfect. Since we had the personal, I figured it would be amazing. But thanks to some guys on the national team that had an amazing talent but a "me-first" and a "personal agenda", we ve failed time and time again. Lula obviously needs to take the blame for some of it. If he´s getting these guys on the national team, he needed to be able to impose his will on them, and has failed time and time again. I dont support him anymore. And neither does the players. They had a meeting among themselves and put things were they should be, and even if some players dont like others on a personal level, they decided they were putting their differences behind and work toward this olympic berth. That meeting is one of the reasons that Barbosa is today a saaad panda, as he ceartainly had some blame for how this team was playing. Which is a shame, considering what an amazing human being Barbosa is.

I will put another diary for the team.