Tiago Leifert rebuts Casagrande and denies that he has mistreated superiors on TV

Commentator Walter Casagrande Jr., 59, added another chapter to the controversy involving the former soccer players who won the 2002 World Cup, who recently criticized him after he said they were “distant from the people”. In his UOL Esporte column, published this Wednesday (7), he refutes lines by Kaká, Marcos and Rivaldo, and even accused presenter Tiago Leifert, 42, of treating superiors at Rede Globo. The journalist hit back at him on social media.

Casagrande accused Leifert of trying to harm him and said that there is evidence of this, “even on video on the internet”. “He tried to ridicule me a few times live, on TV Globo, to favor friendly commentators. He disrespected superiors in front of everyone for being the son of a director”, completes the former player, citing Gilberto Leifert, 71, who was Director of Relations with Mercado at Globo between 1988 and 2018.

“What you wrote about me in your column is not true and you know it. I’ve never mistreated any boss (I have the phone number for them!), I talk to everyone and I have a great relationship with everyone”, denied Leifert, stating that he wasn’t intimate with the commentator and noting that he left the station with honors and returned this year to work with sports.

“If you have any proof, date, time, email, I’m waiting. I never tried to harm you, I would never do that to you or anyone else. The story you tell makes no sense”, he continues, in a text that called it a “peace mission”.

Casagrande also stated that “when he wrote a text for GQ magazine saying that football and politics could not mix, I wrote another text completely the opposite. [nós dois éramos colunistas no mesmo veículo]🇧🇷 He didn’t like it, he asked the director to have me fired. In the ‘I or he’, it was Tiago who left”, he continued, remembering texts from the year 2018.

About the texts, Leifert says that he left the magazine by his own decision and that he continues to have a good relationship with the team’s employees. “We have other disagreements, supernormal. Besides, what you wrote about me is false, in a practice that seems to me to be the opposite of everything you preach”, he finished.

The confusion started when, recently, Vampeta, world champion with the Brazilian team in 2002, revealed in an interview with Jovem Pan that the group from that World Cup was dissatisfied with Casagrande’s statements, who even compared them with the former Argentine players, who watch the games with the fans and not alongside FIFA officials, like the Brazilians.

The athlete read a group of messages in which Casagrande was the target of criticism from several players such as goalkeeper Marcos, Luizão, Lúcio and Gilberto Silva. In addition, Kaká took to social media to respond to the commentator’s comments and shared a photo montage in which he “lends” his place next to Gianni Infantino, president of the football federation, Casagrande.

In his text, the former Corinthians striker mentions former idols Rivaldo, goalkeeper Marcos and Kaká and says that the “penta musketeers” support “a coup because they also did not accept the democratic defeat of the ‘I lie’ at the polls”, citing this year’s presidential election, in which Luís Inácio Lula da Silva (PT) was elected and Jair Bolsonaro (PL) was defeated.

The former football player also says in the article that he is controversial for being “totally independent” in the field and expressing his opinions without “pampering” or “pampering” the vast majority of former athletes. “I’m impressed with the unity of players in defending themselves when they are criticized by someone, more specifically when I am the critic.”

He also condemns the lack of mobilization, on the part of former athletes, with socially relevant issues, such as anti-racist movements, against homophobia and violence suffered by women and even with the lack of vaccines during the most critical period of the Covid pandemic. -19. “For them, it’s not a strong enough reason to come together. But when someone touches their wound, then they come together.”