With less than two weeks until the 2022 World Cup, squads are being announced. Some will inevitably be amended as further injuries are sustained during the final round of club fixtures, but we’re starting to get a picture of who will be in Qatar and who will be getting a mid-season rest.
One player who perhaps surprisingly won’t be taking part is Roberto Firmino. It’s not a shock in the sense than he has not played for Brazil since the final of the 2021 Copa America, being an unused substitute at best in their eight matches this year.
But his omission comes after he had a very productive start to the 2022/23 season. In the space of nine games, only five of which he started, Firmino scored eight goals and provided four assists. Not since the winter of 2017 has the Brazilian made more contributions in an arbitrary time frame of this length.
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Against the context of 11 goals and five assists in the whole of last season, his recent hot streak looks even more impressive. At the time of writing, only 21 players in Europe’s big five leagues have scored more non-penalty goals this season, and Neymar is the only one of Firmino’s countrymen among them. Add in assists for the sake of argument and only Robert Lewandowski, Lionel Messi, Jamal Musiala and the aforementioned Brazilian at Paris Saint-Germain are ahead of Firmino in both charts.
With form like this, how can Tite possibly exclude Liverpool’s number nine from his squad? The Brazil manager will have a basis for his decision, of course, but he may have reasoned that Firmino’s recent burst of form was merely the latest in a career that has been very up and down in this regard. After all, the 31-year-old started seven successive matches from the home win over Manchester City through to the victory at Tottenham and didn’t directly contribute to a goal in any of them.
Despite this dry spell, Firmino has still scored eight goals from chances valued at 4.7 expected goals this season ( per FBRef ), a large overperformance which could yet regress further. For context, across the previous five completed campaigns, he scored 72 goals from 70.3 xG, so his figures this season are out of character (as well as being drawn from a relatively small sample). While this would likely have had little bearing in a small tournament like the World Cup, it is difficult to assess the former Hoffenheim forward’s season.
Tite may also have omitted Firmino for tactical reasons. Per FBRef, while Brazil have played eight of their World Cup qualification matches and 2022 friendlies in the 4-3-3 formation in which he has played so much with Liverpool, 14 of the games have seen some variant of 4-4-2 or 4-2-3-1. That these have been their tactics for five of their last six matches suggests this is their plan for Qatar.
Of course, Jurgen Klopp’s recent tactical tweaks mean Firmino has gained experience of life beyond a 4-3-3 formation with Liverpool. His playing time breaks down almost evenly – 647 minutes in the normal framework, 622 in the variations – and it’s interesting to see how his stats differ.
Eight of the Brazilian’s 12 goal contributions have occurred in the 4-3-3 system, meaning he has scored or assisted 1.11 times per 90 minutes in that formation compared to 0.58 in others. Yet his combined expected goals and assists have been 0.13 per 90 better in the less familiar team shapes.
In other words, his 2022/23 form in the 4-3-3 formation is unsustainable whereas his output in the other systems could be. Tite may have opted to exclude Firmino from his World Cup plans on the basis that it’s not easy to know what he’ll deliver in any tactical shape at present. In what looks likely to be his final season with Liverpool, the Brazilian forward remains as much of a footballing enigma as ever.
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