The dressing-room scene Paul Clement describes is wonderfully evocative.In one corner, a group of players are juggling the ball with each other. In another, team-mates sit quietly with their headphones on. Some are stretching or receiving treatment. The expressions range from the smiling and the spirited to the stoic. The soundtrack, he says, is “obviously Brazilian”.It sounds like something straight out of a Nike advert, but this is the scene Clement anticipates at MetLife Stadium before Brazil’s opening game of the 2026 World Cup against Morocco this evening (Saturday). The former Derby County, Swansea City and Reading manager sometimes feels like he is living a dream as assistant to Brazil’s head coach Carlo Ancelotti, but by the time they reach the stadium in East Rutherford, New Jersey, today, it will all feel very real.As kick-off time nears, the samba beat quietens down and the players turn to prayer. “It’s a very religious and very spiritual atmosphere,” Clement says. “There’s prayer before the game and there’s prayer after the game, preceded by a few words from the captain or senior player, or the head coach or the director of the federation. It’s nice. It brings a lot of togetherness and camaraderie.”Bruno Guimaraes, Carlo Ancelotti and Paul Clement (right) at Brazil training last September (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)Clement talks about some of the players and the personalities involved.“The spine of the squad is very strong,” he says. “We’ve usually got Alisson in goal, Marquinhos and Gabriel very strong in central defence, experience in the full-back positions. Casemiro is having a resurgence for the national team, so he’ll be key. We’ll have Bruno Guimaraes, Paqueta and others in midfield. The real strength of the team is in the attacking positions: Raphinha, Vinicius Junior, (Gabriel) Martinelli, Matheus Cunha, some fabulous younger players and, obviously, Neymar.“What I love about this team is that they’ve got a really good leadership group, with characters like Marquinhos, Alisson, Casemiro. Another one is Danilo, who is another super leader and strong character, whether he plays or not. The hierarchy there is that the younger players very much look up to the senior players. If you’ve played 80, 90, 100-plus times for Brazil, there is a real respect for those players. It helps keep a certain order.”The most experienced, of course, is Brazil’s record goalscorer Neymar, who has been called into the World Cup squad by Ancelotti almost three years after winning the most recent of his 128 caps.The 34-year-old’s battle to overcome a calf injury has created a familiar sense of melodrama around the team, but Clement, who was speaking to The Athletic before the squad was announced last month, feels Ancelotti is the perfect coach to ensure that, inside the camp at least, there are no distractions from the job in hand.“Carlo is always a great fit for a big team; big dressing room, big characters, big personalities,” he says. “He’s not looking for conflict with people. He’s looking to get the best out of them. He thrives in that type of environment. I’ve seen him a few times take over what you could see as a potentially difficult, egotistical dressing room and manage it brilliantly.“We had some big stars at Chelsea, at Paris Saint-Germain, at Real Madrid in particular, and he manages that side of things so well.”He talks about Ancelotti’s composure and clarity of thought in high-pressure situations, citing the Champions League final in 2014, when Real Madrid were 1-0 down to Atletico Madrid at half-time. Ancelotti calmly assured his players they would perform better in the second half and made a few small tactical tweaks.When the anticipated second-half improvement did not bring an equaliser, he replaced Fabio Coentrao and Sami Khedira with Marcelo and Isco on the hour, then Karim Benzema with Alvaro Morata 20 minutes later. The equaliser from Sergio Ramos came very late, in the third minute of stoppage time, but Ancelotti remained convinced Madrid would prevail — as they did, ultimately, winning 4-1 after extra time.Neymar is back in the fold with Brazil after a three-year absence (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)“When you’re in a job like Real Madrid or like the Brazil team, where there’s a lot of intensity, a lot of pressure, what you don’t want is a nervous, excitable coach who’s going to increase the pressure,” Clement says.Clement might appear an unlikely right-hand man for Ancelotti. The latter was an integral part of the Italy team who reached the 1990 World Cup semi-final on home soil (having been an unused squad member at the 1986 tournament in Mexico) and was then assistant to head coach Arrigo Sacchi when the Italians reached the 1994 final and lost to Brazil on penalties.When Ancelotti won the first of his five Champions League titles as a coach, with Milan in 2003, Clement was a 31-year-old education and welfare officer at Fulham, having left a job as a school PE teacher in order to work in football.“It’s been an amazing journey, really,” Clement says. “Even when I went to Chelsea and Fulham, I was thinking I might have a career in youth development. I thought it would suit my skills. I never thought I would get to this level.“I went back to Chelsea as under-16s coach (in 2006) and then within four years, I had gone under-16s, under-18s, reserve-team coach. When Guus Hiddink came (as manager in February 2009), I went up with the first team on an interim basis. Then Carlo came in (that summer) and they said, ‘Have a look at Paul’. And he liked me, so I stayed.”Paul Clement watches on as Carlo Ancelotti oversees Chelsea against Birmingham City in November 2010 (Shaun Botterill/Getty Images)Ancelotti has described him as “one of the most dynamic and intelligent coaches”. Those qualities have not brought success in brief spells as head coach of Derby, Swansea, Reading or Belgian club Cercle Brugge, but Clement’s work alongside him has been highly valued at Chelsea, PSG, Madrid and Bayern Munich.When Ancelotti left Madrid last year after a second spell in charge to take the Brazil job, Clement jumped at the invitation to reunite with him. Since then, he has immersed himself in learning Portuguese as well as watching Brazil’s many European-based players on a regular basis.With opponents as varied as Morocco, Haiti and Scotland to face in the group stage alone, Clement expects this World Cup to throw up different challenges from a coaching and tactical perspective.It is such a change of pace: from the relative humdrum of a qualifying campaign and pre-tournament friendly matches to the intensity once the real action starts. The days when a team of Brazil’s stature could simply rely on their technical ability and flair are long gone; every side have to work on the small details, analysing their own players and their opponents in depth, looking for marginal gains rather than making assumptions.Endrick (left), Rayan and Igor Thiago at Brazil training ahead of the Morocco match (Mauro Pimentel/AFP via Getty Images)“I think most teams will have a set-piece specialist,” Clement says. “Where it used to be picked up by one of the coaches, I think with most teams you’ll see a specialist persona in that role. There will be a lot of emphasis on that in the World Cup.“Once you get to the knockout stage, it’s very likely that you’re going to come up against a penalty shootout at some point, so preparations for that will be another big factor.“Then there’s the heat and, of course, there are the hydration breaks, three minutes each half, so it will be interesting to see how coaches use that time — not just for drinking and dealing with the heat but also for tactical information. I’m sure part of that is for commercial TV, so they can run adverts during the water breaks, but it’s going to be interesting from a coaching perspective.”Brazil have not won a World Cup since securing their fifth title in 2002. There followed a series of European successes (Italy, Spain, Germany, France) before the anguish, for Brazilians, of seeing big South American rivals Argentina win a third world title in Qatar four years ago.Their longing to be world champions again is what led them to hire Ancelotti and his staff at considerable expense, hoping that the Italian, with his experience of high-pressure situations at several of the biggest clubs in Europe, can lead them back to the biggest prize of all.Ancelotti and Clement have their sights on securing a sixth star for Brazil’s shirts (Rodrigo Buendia/AFP via Getty Images)“They’re desperate for the next one — that sixth star on the shirt,” Clement says. “All the talk is about wanting to go all the way. You just have to make sure you get to the latter stages and, at that point, so much is about fine margins and anything can happen.“You obviously need to play really well. You also need a few things to go your way. You need to be in the best physical shape, the best mental shape, and you have to hope that when it gets to those final stages, you are there and ready to compete to win. That’s what everyone in Brazil expects of us.”