Fluminense 5 x 3 Atlético-MG was the best match of the Brazilian until the 12th round. After the game, the tricolor defender David Braz commented that he had watched a debate by “Seleção SporTV” about the level of the championship and regretted that the commentators judged the technical index low.
“Players and coaches are doing as much as possible to show that we still have the best football in the world. You can’t generalize when there’s a bad game.”
Not as optimistic as David Braz, not as grumpy as we commentators.
The Brazilian starts with the flattest table in recent years, the leader with the lowest number of points and the best average audience in ten years. If the games are that bad, why are the stands filled with more people than before?
There are a lot of things mixed up, but nobody leaves home, in a harsh winter, with people saying that the stadiums are elite, to watch low quality football.
The Campeonato Brasileiro is far from being the Premier League – and it could get closer, if the league gets off the ground. On the other hand, for decades, round tables have been a kind of “Midnight in Paris”, a film by Woody Allen, in which Owen Wilson’s character returns to Paris in the 1920s and realizes how, even in what seems the most perfect period of humanity, there was nostalgia for the past.
The first time I heard the expression “football is on a low level” was when Bangu and Coritiba decided on the 1985 Brazilian Championship. Many years later, when leafing through the collection of Placar magazine, an October 1982 issue caught my eye. In a poll about who would win Paulista, one of the participants wrote: “Corinthians will win, because the championship is leveled at the bottom”. Now, Socrates, Casagrande, Zenon and Wladimir were in contention against Waldir Peres, Oscar, Darío Pereyra, Serginho and Mário Sérgio, months after the defeat of Telê Santana’s charming team to Italy.
No, the Brazilian is not the best championship in the world, and it is necessary to work on a lot of factors to improve it. Increasing coaches’ tenure, stabilizing squads, improving turf, decreasing the exodus.
On the other hand, the championship by consecutive points will be 20 years old, and anyone who saw the first dispute, in 2003, will remember that no team was praised, except for Alex and Vanderlei Luxemburgo’s Cruzeiro.
It’s a delicious exercise to compare what you saw with the magic of a ten-year-old boy to what you see in the maturity of 50. Four and a half decades ago, I had never seen anything like the Santos of Nílton Batata, Juary and João Paulo. Letting the naive look rule, there has never been a striker as fast and brilliant as Juary, European champion for Porto in 1987 and São Paulo with Meninos da Vila in 1978.
Anyone who goes back to that time will know that there was already nostalgia, as Owen Wilson’s character found in Paris in the 1920s.
Thank you, Tosta! Thank you, Juca!
My gratitude for Tostão’s preface and for Juca Kfouri’s praise for my recently released book by Letras do Brasil: “Cinco Estrelas – a Conquista do Penta”.
The only team in history to win all seven games to be world champion could serve to lessen an age-old question: “Would you rather lose like 1982 or win like 1994?” Now, in a country that has been three and five times winning all the matches and with the best attack, this is a false dilemma.
At the time of the penta, and in the tri, there was also a bad game.
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