“Our decision was based on keeping our coach. The idea is that he will continue with Fluminense as a priority and on the FIFA date he will train the team. We are sure that it will not affect work here”, said Bittencourt at a press conference in Rio de Janeiro.
ADVERTISING
Diniz, 49, was announced on Tuesday as interim coach of the Seleção for one year, while Ancelotti fulfills his contract with Real Madrid, which runs until June 2024.
The Italian coach will take over the Brazilian team at next year's Copa América, which will be played in the United States from June 20 to July 14, according to CBF president Ednaldo Rodrigues.
Diniz will debut for the national team in September, against Bolivia and Peru, in the South American qualifiers for the 2026 World Cup.
ADVERTISING
“Routine will remain the same”
“The routine here will remain the same, throughout this period he will be working full time with Fluminense,” said Bittencourt.
When he is in the Seleção, the Rio team's training sessions will be led by one of his assistants and, under no circumstances, will Diniz be absent from any of the team's games.
Fluminense, which is in sixth place in the Brazilian Championship, 12 points behind leader Botafogo, and will face Argentinos Juniors in the round of XNUMX of the Copa Libertadores, in August, accepted the agreement with the CBF because it believes it will not be harmed.
ADVERTISING
Furthermore, it was the coach’s wish and the club will receive “excellent financial compensation” from the CBF.
Diniz “will have to get more sleep… he has full capacity to direct his focus on more than one activity”, highlighted Bittencourt.
The coach will occupy the interim role that was held by Ramon Menezes, coach of the Under-20 National Team, who took over the main team after Tite's departure, following their elimination in the quarter-finals of the 2022 World Cup.
ADVERTISING
Conflict of interests
Diniz's announcement generated criticism from fans and sectors of the press, who point out a possible conflict of interest in the preparation of the squad list.
“Fernando is a guy of great character, ethical”, highlighted the president of Fluminense.
Although unusual, it is not the first time that the Seleção and a Brazilian club have shared a coach.
ADVERTISING
The two most recent cases happened with Vanderlei Luxemburgo and Emerson Leão.
Luxemburgo replaced Zagallo after the runner-up in the world championship in 1998, when he was still coach of Corinthians, and accumulated the duties until the end of that year.
Leão took over from 'Luxa', who was fired in September 2000, after the team's mistakes and problems with the law.
In October, the former goalkeeper was announced as coach of the Seleção and continued in charge of Sport Recife until the end of the year.
Read more:
* The text of this article was partially generated by artificial intelligence tools, state-of-the-art language models that assist in the preparation, review, translation and summarization of texts. Text entries were created by the Curto News and responses from AI tools were used to improve the final content.
It is important to highlight that AI tools are just tools, and the final responsibility for the published content lies with the Curto News. By using these tools responsibly and ethically, our objective is to expand communication possibilities and democratize access to quality information. 🤖
