After Brazil's unhappy quarter-final exit at the 2010 World Cup, new coach Mano Menezes, with the backing of the Brazilian public and the football federation, set about knocking everything down and starting again.
The plan was to move away from the physical, counter-attacking, win-at-all costs approach of his predecessor Dunga, back towards the inventive, attacking football associated with the yellow-shirted sides of the past.
"It's a long road to travel and good intentions are not enough," he told Brazilian reporters after Germany recorded a first win over the South Americans in 18 years.
"We would like to be better. In football, there are no miracles, we have to get past these stages. We played with three forwards and an attacking midfielder and we were still not as positive as we wanted to be."
"Marking and destroying are easier, the creative part is more difficult, and here we are struggling," he said. "It's proving very difficult for us to create attacking moves."
With the defeat following on the heels of last month's disappointing Copa America performance, where Brazil lost on penalties to Paraguay in the quarter-finals and managed only one win at the tournament, pressure is mounting.
"I prefer the reality, even if it is tough, to illusion of results without consistency which could bring even greater losses in the future," CBF president Ricardo Teixeira said on the confederation's website.
"The work continues with the full confidence of the CBF."
"Our opponents always knew where each other were, they always had a defensive midfielder in the right place, they made everything difficult, we are far from reaching this degree of automation," he said.
