When being champion doesn’t guarantee anything – 09/23/2023 – Juca Kfouri

Brazilian football and its oddities.

Three big clubs are close to winning important cups and, at the same time, are at risk of falling to Series B of the Brazilian Championship.

This is the case of Internacional, three steps away from the third Libertadores championship, although with Fluminense and Palmeiras or Boca Juniors ahead.

He’s not a favorite, but in the knockout stage anything can happen. And, if it happens or not, they will have to look down because they are just five points away from the relegation zone.

It’s unlikely, but in 2024, he could be four-time champion of the biggest tournament on the American continent while fighting to return to Series A.

São Paulo is in the same situation and even closer, one draw away from winning the unprecedented Copa do Brasil title and just four points ahead of Santos, the first of the last four.

Beating Flamengo this Sunday (24) will mean the best of all worlds for the tricolor. Losing the title at home will be equivalent to the depths of hell.

Finally, Corinthians, like Inter, is three steps away from the trophy that is missing from its trophy cabinet, the Copa Sudamericana.

Also, like Colorado, they are not the favorites in the two games against Fortaleza and in a possible final against LDU from Ecuador, although it could be against the Argentines from Defensa y Justicia.

The black and white team is six points behind Santos.

Without catastrophizing, because there are other stronger candidates for relegation, two already apparently doomed like América and Coritiba, as well as Bahia, Goiás and Santos, or even Cuiabá, the question to fans of the trio competing in the three cups is simple: do you? Would you rather be champion of any of them or avoid falling in the Brasileirão?

Let’s remember that, in 2013, Palmeiras experienced exactly that: champion of the Copa do Brasil in 2012, they competed in the Libertadores until the round of 16 and Series B, of which they became champions, in a journey that the Palmeiras natives prefer to forget.

Through the Copa do Brasil, Criciúma, in 1992, Santo André, in 2005, and Paulista de Jundiaí, in 2006, competed simultaneously in the Libertadores and Série B.

In their case, a feat, in Palmeiras’ case, a shame.

CPI OF BETS

Reporter Daniel Pereira, from Veja, signs an important report about the behind-the-scenes of the CPI das Apostas, in which he reveals that deputy Felipe Carreras (PSB-PE) had asked for 35 million reais from an association of gambling banks in exchange for two favors : defend her interests in regulating the sector and not make the lives of her associates in the CPI of the Chamber of Deputies hell.

The CPI was created for exactly this purpose, to create difficulties in selling facilities.

Let the federal government be alert and remember Lula’s first term, when the bingo scandal, in 2004, caused the first headache in the management of the PT, thanks to a certain Waldomiro Diniz, who wanted to extort the no less notorious Goiás bicheiro Carlinhos Cachoeira.

Diniz ended up convicted, and bingos were banned.

Now, thanks to the ease of the internet, gambling has returned, and banning it is harmless, which is why it is being regulated.

Less bad than the Ministry of Finance has Fernando Haddad at its head, not Antonio Palocci as at the time.

In any case, in the waters of gambling, alligators swim backwards and there will be little attention with so many smart guys.

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