Parties are better than games – 09/26/2023 – Tostão

The beautiful fan parties across the country, like São Paulo’s in the final of the Copa do Brasil, Vasco fans’ reunion with the team, Atlético-MG’s honeymoon with the new stadium, and many others , are above, disconnected from the quality of the matches.

These meetings, with audiences never seen before, occur due to numerous factors: such as the post-loneliness catharsis of the Covid-19 pandemic, the continued passion for football, the lack of interest in other entertainment, in addition to hopelessness, due to the mental fatigue of people with the violence, insecurity and fake news that plague the country. Football became an escape valve.

The São Paulo players, Dorival Júnior and the coaching staff deserve praise for their dedication and achievement of this important, exciting and unprecedented title. But the game, from the analyst’s critical eye, was very weak. São Paulo, to defend the advantage of the draw, limited itself to taking shots. Flamengo had the ball, but they had no collective or individual talent.

Apart from that match, São Paulo improved under the command of Dorival Júnior. In addition to the arrival of some good players, the team has played with more midfielders, more exchange of passes and with less rush to reach the goal, a deficiency that existed under the command of Rogério Ceni.

Dorival Júnior also showed his greatness by not criticizing Flamengo’s board after the game, who, for no reason, had fired him after winning the Copa do Brasil and Libertadores. Dorival is a balanced and non-starry coach, unlike many others, who think they are more important than football.

Flamengo became an ordinary team. The pride of the managers, in hiring very expensive players as if they were great players in world football, was passed on to the athletes, some of whom are spoiled and who think they are better than they are.

Sampaoli, at the beginning of his career, when he was coach of the Universidad de Chile and the Chilean national team, impressed everyone with a different strategy, not practiced in Brazil, of pressing from the goalkeeper’s ball. He must have learned from Bielsa. Today it is a strategy widely used in Brazil and around the world. Over time, Sampaoli lost his charm and became a strange and irregular coach.

They say that Flamengo is looking for Tite or Jorge Jesus. It would be a good chance to exorcise the ghost of Jorge Jesus, because, after he left, no one pleased anyone anymore, even those who were champions.

Brazilian football needs to evolve, on and off the field. The problems are not just about the calendar, lawns and poor management. They are also technical, tactical. Sports science has developed all over the world and we are lagging behind the Europeans. There is a lot of hype, a lot of rush to label heroes and villains and a lot of repetition of clichés and preconceptions. There are few reflections.

Every week they ask for a new player for the selection. Fernando Diniz was nice when he called up five who work in Brazil. The one who deserves it most was not called up again, goalkeeper Weverton, from Palmeiras.

The commonplaces that Brazil is the country of football, that there is a star on every corner here and that there should be a return to the past, so that we can start playing with more improvisation and little planning, are captivating and outdated concepts. The world and football have changed.

It is necessary to combine technique, tactics and inventiveness. We should know the past better, live in the present and dream about the future.

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