A portrait of our football – 09/30/2023 – Juca Kfouri

Fluminense and Internacional played a game at Maracanã to be sung in prose and verse for a long time. They just can’t ruin the beautiful impression in the return match, now in Beira-Rio, on Wednesday (4).

The 2-2 would be praised both at Wembley and at the Santiago Bernabéu.

The 0-0 between Boca Juniors and Palmeiras ended up being the usual, more fight than football, although good for the Alviverdes.

Fernando Diniz, by chance the interim coach, buffer, flannel of the Brazilian team, was on the edge of the playing field and had a lot of responsibility for the quality of the classic, audacious to the point of harassing the Gauchos with four attackers, namely: Jhon Arias, John Kennedy, Germán Cano and Keno, with greater emphasis on Arias and Cano.

On the other side, Argentine coach Eduardo Coudet accepted the challenge and decided not to give his rival peace, for which he counted on the exuberance of Enner Valencia’s art.

Not only, of course, is he the one who commands the most international of Brazilian clubs, with no less than nine players born outside Brazil: Valencia, Rochet, Market, Bustos, De Pena, Nicolás Hernández, Aránguiz, Johnny and Wanderson.

Wanderson was born in Belgium, and even played for the Belgian under-16 team, although he also has Brazilian citizenship, the son of former player Wamberto, revealed by Maranhão’s Sampaio Corrêa and whose career was spent almost entirely between Belgium and the Netherlands.

If there were only two foreigners in the Palmeiras team at Bombonera, Gustavo Goméz, the most valuable member of the squad, and Piquerez, at Maracanã it was the Ecuadorian Valencia, the Colombian Arias and the Argentinean Cano who unbalanced the team.

Without them the show would be lost, and, what a shame, Diniz can’t call them up.

Anything against bringing in good foreign players?

Nothing, on the contrary.

Just the realization that we exchanged our fascination with the performances of Alisson and Ederson, Casemiro and Vinicius Junior, Rodrygo and Martinelli, for European lawns, for the enjoyment of a bunch of South American brothers, when we could have had them without giving up of ours, were the Brazilian clubs run in the 21st Century way, not the 20th.

But we are on our way, eternal optimists that we are.

It’s bro, bro

Corinthians didn’t even expect to lose to São Paulo (if they will, as this column is published before Majestoso) and, in order not to fire their 16th coach after the defeat to Tricolor, they tried to send Vanderlei Luxemburgo away before the classic.

He didn’t do any good or bad, because he shouldn’t have been hired.

He brought Mano Menezes in for the third time with the difficult task of qualifying the team for the final of the Copa Sudamericana.

They will seek to draw at Castelão against Fortaleza, which is superior to them, and count on Cássio for new miracles.

Let’s face it, the former bingo owner who presides over the club turned it into a rare casino in which the bank loses.

Because even if they win the bet this time, even if they defeat São Paulo and overcome Fortaleza, Duilio Monteiro Alves’ management is everything that a giant like Corinthians should repel. Especially because, at the end of his term, he imposed Mano until 2025.

The worst thing is that there will be an election at the end of November, and the options are as if the rare reader had to choose between Fernando Collor and Jair Bolsonaro: corruption with freedom or corruption with brutality.

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