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Samba coach for Brazil's soccer squad

Brazil, the world's top-ranked footballing nation as per FIFA's latest rankings despite its defeat at the hands of host nation France in the final of the 1998 World Cup, are to have a new coach.

Globo Television claimed in a report that Vanderley Luxemburgo, the 46-year-old now coaching the Sao Paulo club Corinthians, will be given the hottest job in international soccer.

The Brazilian Football Confederation is expected to make it official, later this week.

Luxemburgo, who does not have a Brazil cap to his name, is seen as something of a coaches' coach, having been hugely successful in the last few years.

Since 1993, he has thrice coached Palmeiras to wins in the Paulista championship (the Sao Paulo state championships) and also won the Brazilian championship twice with the same side.

He then shifted to Corinthians, who under his stewardship have won the first four games of the Brazilian championship, smashing Atletico Mineiro 5-1 in their latest game this weekend.

Luxemborgo's appointment will be widely welcomed by Brazil fans, as he is an ardent believer in the Samba style of stylish, attacking soccer that Brazil's two previous coaches had more or less repudiated.

Carlos Alberto Parreira, who coached the national side to its title triumph in the 1994 World Cup, emphasised rock solid defence and tight, controlled play as his winning mantra, repeatedly averring that the team's first priority should be to win the cup, not put on a show of flashy soccer.

Mario Zagallo, who succeeded him, played lip service to the free-flowing soccer so beloved of Brazilians, but in the recent World Cup, went in with packed defenses while leaving players of the calibre of Danielson, today the world's most expensive player, on the bench for prolonged periods.

Luxemburgo is expected to turn the clock back, and to bring Brazilian soccer back to the style of the seventies and eighties.

Interestingly, Parreira remains a front-runner for a second stint at the job of coaching Brazil.