Palmeiras and São Paulo decide national title after 50 years – 02/03/2024 – Sports

Palmeiras and São Paulo have one of the oldest rivalries in Brazilian football, with more than nine decades of history, but to date they have never faced each other in a national championship final. The first clash of this type between the clubs will be this Sunday (4), in the decision of the Supercopa Rei.

The duel that pits the current champions of the Copa do Brasil and the Brazilian Championship was renamed from this season onwards to honor King Pelé (1940 -2022). Winner of the last points competition, the Alviverde team is looking for its second Super Cup trophy, while the Tricolor team has the opportunity to reach the cup for the first time.

Scheduled for 4pm (broadcast by Globo, Sportv and Premiere), the match was taken to the Mineirão stadium, in Belo Horizonte, due to the ban on classics with two fans in São Paulo.

It’s a very different scenario from the one in which Palmeiras and São Paulo played the only game to date that was worth a national title, although it wasn’t exactly a final. Five decades ago, the rivals met in the last round of the decisive quadrangular of the 1973 Brazilian Championship.

The match was played at the beginning of the following year, on February 20, 1974, with the two fans sharing the Morumbi stands, which received an audience of 66,549 people.

Palmeiras de Leão, Luís Pereira and Ademir da Guia, then called Segunda Academia, needed just a draw to secure the title, as they were leading the dispute — which included, in addition to the two São Paulo teams, Internacional and Cruzeiro.

A victory would have given the title to São Paulo of Waldir Peres, Pedro Rocha and Mirandinha. The game, however, did not end 0-0, for Palmeiras celebration.

When reporting that game, Folha da Manhã portrayed that there were two distinct times: “In the first, violence was declared and football was forgotten”. Regarding the second, the newspaper noted: “The violence was forgotten and a spectacle was made”, although, again, without goals.

After that duel, the two rivals would only meet in a decision almost 20 years later, in 1992, when São Paulo defeated Palmeiras in the final of the Campeonato Paulista, the first of three state finals between the two clubs. In 2021, the Tricolores also won, and, in 2022, it was the Alviverde team’s turn to win the trophy.

Since the State’s decision, there have been nine classics, with four victories for Palmeiras, three for São Paulo and two other draws. In the most recent clash, the green team won 5-0 in a match for the 29th round of the Brazilian Championship, a result that helped boost the green team on its way to winning the national title.

Coach Thiago Carpini, however, prefers to cling to the recent momentum of the tricolor team, which comes from three wins and a draw in the Campeonato Paulista, including the first victory in tricolor history over Corinthians at the Itaquera stadium, last Tuesday. (30).

“The first four rounds [do Paulista]with a taboo break, have a very positive aspect for the final”, highlighted the coach. “Of course, when the game starts, it doesn’t influence anything, but arriving at a good moment, in which São Paulo navigates there more calmly at the start of the competition, it is undoubtedly very positive”, he added.

A victory in Belo Horizonte would give the 39-year-old his first title as a coach. To do so, however, he will have to overcome Portuguese Abel Ferreira, 45, who has already collected nine trophies in just over three years at the helm of Palmeiras.