i don't think casemiro was particularly poor last season, he wasn't amazing by any stretch. he was just average, and when i say average i'm not talking about his inability to pass or any of the fancy stuff; i don't judge my defensive midfielders based on that as that's not their job, but occasionally he put himself in harms way with some unnecessary cards. i thought (And i'm a fan of this player) carvajal was poor last season, and so too marcelo from a defensive standpoint....varane impressed me in the latter ucl stages, but i was getting fed up with him at some point

casemiro wasn't poor for brazil , though i'm not going to make him a martyr for them losing. as for marcelo, i'm not against him seating out some games, but when games aren't open we would need some creative spark from the left which nacho cannot provide. not to mention, it makes us very thin defensively at cb if nacho starts out wide........but yet we have like 90 goalkeepers, just genius....

Mr Nick09 wrote:Agreed he was good for Brazil. If anything they missed him a great deal vs Belgium

That was their first top test.  Mexico and Serbia are decent... but nowhere near Belgium in terms of quality and especially attacking talent.  Switzerland and Costa Rica were the other games. First game where Brazil didn't have any control of the pace of the game.

Not to mention Marcelo was nowhere to be found and De Bruyne had a field day attacking from that side.

It came down to Brazil getting found out against the first truly talented team they played in the World Cup. Never easy to come off the bench when you've played little and go against Hazard and DeBruyne with Marcelo and Fagner as your fullbacks. As a DM, which which way do you cover? Not to mention Paulinho and Coutinho don't help much.