Palmeiras narrowly lost to Água Santa – 02/04/2023 – Juca Kfouri

If there was a peaceful state decision in the main centers of Brazilian football, this was São Paulo.

It was obviously not the disputed between Flamengo and Fluminense, nor the one between América and Atlético Mineiro, nor even the duel between Caxias and Grêmio.

Even the Jacuipense looked more threatening than the unreliable Bahia at Fonte Nova.

Well, the biggest surprise happened in São Paulo.

Flamengo beat Fluminense 2-0 well, Galo scored a hard-fought 3-2 victory in the last minute, Caxias almost beat Grêmio, but also took the 1-1 lead in stoppage time, and Bahia scored 3-0 against Jacuipense .

A real surprise came at Arena Barueri with only 22,000 fans, 9,000 below the stadium’s capacity.

Who knows if the stop for FIFA dates broke Palmeiras’ rhythm, if Rapahel Veiga and Rony felt the famous “selection effect”, if Weverton too, after, finally, starting in Morocco, but the Brazilian champion has to raise your hands to the sky because the 2-1 defeat did not express the first game of the decision.

At the very least, Água Santa deserved a victory by two goals apart, such was the superiority shown in the second half.

It is true that Dudu remained absent from the Brazilian team and played very poorly, as did Gabriel Menino, in a childhood afternoon, even for having wasted the chance to pass the ball to three better-off teammates and tried to score an improbable goal when the game was still 0 to 0.

Against the apparently more fragile opponent, Abel Ferreira’s team was the big one with the worst performance.

There are all the conditions for the team to do with the opponent next Sunday (9), in the green house, what it did with São Paulo in the past (it turned 3-1 at Morumbi with a resounding 4-0). But this time there is more than a stone in the way: there is a huge mountain, 3,600 m high, called La Paz, where he will play in the middle of the week for the Copa Libertadores against Bolívar.

As is known, in the Bolivian capital, when the plane lands, it seems to be taking off. And when it takes off, it appears to be a submarine.

Atrocious dilemma.

Do you consider the Libertadores debut to be lost, because you will have five chances to recover the lost points and still finish in first place, or are you betting on winning the two games ahead?

The undefeated state title is already impossible, but losing it will be equivalent to embarrassment worse than fourth place in the Club World Cup. As happened in 1986, when he became the first big player to lose a decision to a club from the interior, Internacional de Limeira.

Before, three times, in 1977, 1979 and 1981, Corinthians, twice, and São Paulo, had defeated Ponte Preta, in fact, much more qualified than Inter. Palmeiras himself, in 1976, had won the XV de Piracicaba.

Everything has changed a lot in the world of football.

A group that runs after the ball as Neném Prancha wanted, as if it were a plate of food, makes the difference more and more, and the Diadema team was exemplary in the face of the Alviverde millionaires.

Nothing that changes Palmeiras favoritism from water to wine, but everything that imposes, at least, a question mark over who will be the champion of São Paulo.

Would you, rare reader and rare reader, bet everything you have on Palmeiras alone or would you reserve some to put faith in Água Santa?

Prudent –and staunch opponent of betting, mainly from the newsstands–, I recommend not betting.

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