Scotland's first-round opponents Brazil, the tournament favourites, were in disarray last night, with the coach Mario Zagallo having spent much of the day denying a rift between the striker Edmundo and his teammates and defending the decision to cut short training to attend a party organised by the team's sponsor, Nike.

Zagallo last night said Bebeto would replace the injured Romario against Scotland on Wednesday. Edmundo responded by claiming on Rio de Janeiro radio that he was in better form than his forward rival. But Zagallo countered: "Bebeto scores goals, he moves around a lot and he is better than Edmundo at coming back to help the midfield."

Back in Brazil the national media, fed news of alleged infighting and poor morale in the squad by the wives of players and officials, turned on their heroes. The main sports paper Lance! yesterday asked the previously unaskable: "Can Brazil even win their group?" Rio's main newspaper declared: "Disunited FC."

The atmosphere among the players is said to have been affected and the captain Dunga had to call the team's attention to celebrate Giovanni's opening goal against Andorra on Wednesday. Zagallo said last night that any players guilty of serious indiscipline would be sent straight home. "The moment there is a serious problem, you can be sure we will be down to 21 players."

Edmundo was allegedly involved in a dressing-room argument with Leonardo after last Sunday's friendly against Athletic Bilbao, claiming he was not passed the ball. The striker was then left on the bench against Andorra.

Edmundo's wife Adriana told the O Globo newspaper: "He's depressed because he's not being given the chance to play. Against Andorra, both Bebeto and Ronaldo missed sitters. I'm not saying he would have scored the goals but at least he would have tried."

However, the midfielder Rivaldo yesterday claimed the incident in Bilbao had been exaggerated. "Edmundo complained he didn't get the ball and Leonardo, who is very calm and polite, tried to calm him down," Rivaldo said. "Edmundo didn't accept his intervention but in the next five minutes things had calmed."

Leonardo also played down the incident, saying: "Nothing happened. This is like a cordless phone conversation: the story changes every time it is told to someone else."

On Thursday the team cut short a training session and travelled by police escort across Paris during peak hour to attend the opening of "Nikepark", with Dunga among those who saw the exercise as a waste of time. "We'd like to be training now," he said. "This is a nice party, very well organised. But this party comes at the wrong time."

But Zagallo insisted his squad had a duty to attend the function and that preparations for Wednesday's tournament opener had not been affected. "If someone is paying us 400 million or 600 million or however much and they ask us to do something, then I think we have to do it," he said.

Since the decision to release Romario from the squad on Tuesday, cracks have begun to show in the relationship between Zagallo and his assistant Zico. The tension, which dates back to Zagallo refusing to pick Zico for the 1974 World Cup, increased when Zico was appointed after the coach insisted he did not need an assistant.

It has been claimed in the Brazilian press - through the wife of the team medic Lidio Toledo - that Zico overruled Toledo (a close friend of Zagallo) who believed Romario would recover in time.

The English FA yesterday took a gamble on its chances of staging the 2006 World Cup by declaring support for Sepp Blatter to be FIFA's next president in the vote in Paris on Monday. Previously the FA was committed to backing the UEFA president Lennart Johansson.