SÃO PAULO, Brazil — While all 32 teams that have qualified for the World Cup anxiously await this week’s draw to determine the groups for next year’s tournament, nowhere is the pressure as great as in Brazil.

Careers for Brazil’s players, coaches and team officials hinge on whether the team lifts the trophy. Concerns about the astronomical costs of hosting the World Cup may be, at least temporarily, assuaged by victory. Even the country’s president, Dilma Rousseff, has a stake — political analysts believe that if Brazil wins, Rousseff may coast to re-election.

It is a load to bear, and at the center of it all is Brazil’s coach, Luiz Felipe Scolari, an affable barrel of a man known as Big Phil. So far, he has embraced the pressure with his two sizable hands.

“We are the hosts,” he said, “so that means that the minimum we have to do — the minimum — is win.”

To help navigate his high-wire performance, he has enlisted the help of a surprising weapon: a psychotherapist. Regina Brandão, a professor at Universidade São Judas Tadeu in São Paulo, has been a member of Scolari’s team since the late 1990s. She may not be an expert in soccer strategy, but she has evaluated each Brazilian player to help Scolari sort 40 or 50 of the world’s most talented players into what he and Brazil hope will be an unbeatable 23-man team.