The Athletic has live coverage of Scotland vs Brazil at the 2026 FIFA World Cup.
Here they come now, the Brazilians, lighting up this World Cup, making it theirs again. They’re so inventive. They make you laugh, and they make you cry, often at the same time. It wouldn’t be a major tournament without them.
Vinicius Junior? Matheus Cunha? Sure, they’re welcome as well, but we’re talking about something else: the online jokers, the memeweavers, the bedroom satirists who have, in the last two weeks, taken a fairly prosaic selection issue and turned it planetary, creating what we can surely, even at this point, declare the viral sensation of this entire tournament.
If you’ve got functioning eyes and an internet connection, you will have seen them: the visual gags, the AI monstrosities, the reskinned old videos. There are too many to count; more appear every minute. They all poke fun at Brazil’s coach, Carlo Ancelotti. The reason? His perceived reticence towards playing Endrick, the 19-year-old forward who has emerged as the Brazilian public’s great World Cup hope, the player who — the argument goes — simply must be dropped into a middling team to make it all golden.
We’ll get to the logic of that position in a moment. First, it is worth just luxuriating in the chaos, taking the temperature of the, well, ‘discourse’ might be a bit generous, but you get the idea.
Sights, sounds from Week 1 of World Cup
The background noise dates back to March, when Endrick — at that point considered an outsider for the World Cup squad, let alone Ancelotti’s starting XI — came on in a friendly against Croatia. In 14 minutes on the pitch, he won a penalty and set up a goal for Gabriel Martinelli.
That cameo pushed him into Ancelotti’s plans for this summer. It also reminded Brazil of his quality. When the Selecao were flattering to deceive in the pre-World Cup warm-up games against Panama and Egypt, the crowd chanted Endrick’s name. The same happened in their Group C opener against Morocco. But while Ancelotti had thrown him on against Egypt (and been repaid with a goal), the youngster remained on the bench for 90 minutes in New Jersey.
Endrick celebrating his goal in a friendly against Egypt (Kirk Irwin/Getty Images)
When asked about it after the game, Ancelotti played a straight bat. “I’m not here to speak about individual players,” he said in his press conference. The death stare he delivered to a YouTuber who asked about Endrick’s non-appearance told you exactly how much time he had for the debate.
And so it began, the memepocalypse.
Brazilian fandom is a funny thing, both in its complexity — Brazil, as one of its great cultural figures once said, is not for beginners — and in the ha-ha sense. With a population of over 200 million, any news story generates a tidal wave of jokes, many of them very sharp.
So it was here. Ancelotti was painted, in about 50,000 different ways, as an arch curmudgeon, a villain who would stop at nothing to thwart every life plan Endrick ever dreamed up.
Here are three illustrative examples, just on the off-chance that you have been living under a rock. If Endrick loved dinosaurs, Ancelotti would be the meteor:
Endrick: me gustan mucho los dinosaurios
Ancelotti: pic.twitter.com/brWD3HqiHE
— Geo D’Incau (@Yosh_G) June 21, 2026
If Endrick said he liked sesame seeds on his burger bun, pigeon Ancelotti would pick them all off:
Endrick: “nossa gente amo gergelim no meu pão”
Ancelotti: pic.twitter.com/ZHmHGx65Lo
— Malone (@BetMalone) June 17, 2026
If Endrick’s game time was guaranteed if Ancelotti fell off this swaying bridge … well, you get the picture:
*se cair da ponte tem que colocar o endrick*
Ancelotti: pic.twitter.com/q18htsAa83
— drogba gremista (@drogbagfbpa) June 19, 2026
This is both funny and, in its own way, significant. For the first 11 months of his stewardship, Ancelotti was not exposed to the mania of Brazil’s football industrial complex. He got the odd taste, mainly in the constant questions about Neymar’s absence from the team, but not the full beam. In the past few weeks, there has been a clear ramping up. A World Cup will do that in a country that has won five of them.
Neymar’s selection and subsequent injury woes have turned the intensity up in the local media. When Brazil exit this competition, the post-mortem will focus on that. Now there is Endrick, too. For now, it feels a little less central, but the story is there, nagging away. Even his appearance as a substitute in the 3-0 win against Haiti on Friday did not seem to take the edge off.
To be clear, there is no evidence that Ancelotti has seen the memes. What we can say is that he is aware of the groundswell of public opinion behind it, the Endrickmania. He is asked about the forward in every press conference. “I note that the fans are pushing hard for Endrick,” he said on Tuesday.
It is not just the fans. World Cup winners Tostao and Bebeto have both called on Ancelotti to pick Endrick. So has Zico, the fulcrum of Brazil’s beloved 1982 side. “I don’t see any other player in the squad with his characteristics or personality,” Zico told ESPN Brasil. “He is decisive.”
There is something to that. Despite limited game time, Endrick has conjured a few big moments for Brazil: witness his first international goal against England at Wembley, or his match-winning contribution in the friendly against Mexico in 2024. “Whenever he comes on, even if it’s just for two or three minutes, he changes the match,” injured Brazil defender Eder Militao said earlier this month. “He has this star power.”
Militao is not the only team-mate to be smitten with him. “A rare jewel,” Brazil utility man Danilo called him after the Morocco game, and that is representative of the wider feeling in the squad.
Ancelotti, to be fair, has also praised Endrick. “He’s an extraordinary talent,” the Italian said last week. That appreciation, though, has yet to translate into a starting berth. Even with Raphinha injured and Neymar not fully fit, the signs are that Endrick will again be left out against Scotland tonight, with Luiz Henrique and Rayan seemingly ahead of him in the pecking order.
Part of the subtext behind all of the jokes and memes is the idea that this is somehow personal. People point to Endrick’s time under Ancelotti at Real Madrid as evidence. He started just eight matches in 2024-25, averaging 23 minutes on the pitch across his 37 appearances.
Endrick and Carlo Ancelotti were together at Madrid (Angel Martinez/Getty Images)
This is surely mischief. Ancelotti had seriously good options at his disposal in Madrid. Endrick was adapting to life in Europe after his big-money move from Palmeiras. The player himself has dismissed any notion of bad blood between him and his manager. “I’m happy to have him in my life,” Endrick said of Ancelotti after the Haiti match. “I thank God that he is here with us, because he’s a great coach.”
Ancelotti’s rationale is likely far less dramatic. For one thing, Endrick’s track record as a starter is underwhelming. He was thrust into the side against Uruguay in the 2024 Copa America — after a similar public campaign, coincidentally — and had a poor game. In his only other start, in a World Cup qualifier against Paraguay, he was taken off at half-time.
That is a small sample size, to be sure, but it is also worth remembering that he is just a kid. He played big games for Palmeiras, but a World Cup is the definition of a high-pressure environment. Protecting him a little may not be such a bad idea. Nor, for all the brilliant players Brazil has produced over the years, is it the norm for youngsters to be thrown in at the deep end: the last teenager to start a World Cup game for them was Marco Antonio, all the way back in 1970.
Make no mistake: Endrick is a talent. That fact, coupled with his loveable personality (and, it must be said, some slick PR), has made him Brazil’s boyfriend. Throw in the Selecao’s struggles against Morocco in particular, and you can understand where the tidal wave of social media posts has come from. Ancelotti, though, looks like he will remain unmoved. “We have to use him at the right moment,” he said this week. “There is no rush.”
The message, for the moment, seems relatively clear: expect more cameos off the bench. And, yes, a few thousand more joyrides on Brazil’s unstoppable meme machine.
