Palmeiras wins Santos and continues with the best Paulista campaign

Palmeiras beat Santos 3-1 this Saturday (4) and reached 14 points on the Paulista Championship leaderboard. Abel Ferreira’s team leads its group and also has the best campaign in the competition. The club, which won the Brazilian Super Cup last week, is doing well at the start of the season.

Santos, in turn, with only six, reaches its fifth straight game without a victory and bitterly bottoms in Group A.

The match, which was played at Morumbi, as Allianz Parque, home of Palmeiras, hosted a Carnival event this Saturday, started balanced, with both teams struggling to get into the opposing area.

In the 26th minute of the first half, however, Zé Rafael deflected a corner from the left, Zanocelo cut badly and the ball was left to Murilo to open the scoring. João Paulo, Santos’ main goalkeeper, had been injured and had been replaced by Vladimir moments before.

After the goal, Palmeiras began to rule the match and created other chances. In another mess from Santos’ defense, the ball fell to Dudu, face to face, but he kicked it out.

Already in the additions, however, after another corner from the left, Zanocelo, again, got in the way and almost scored. Vladimir managed to avoid the goal twice, but, in the spare, Rony kicked hard to extend the scoreboard.

In the second stage, Santos even tried to go up, but ran into technical difficulties; Palmeiras managed the advantage and, when it arrived, managed to expand. At 25, Rony received near the area and rolled for the boy Giovani, who had just entered, to make the third.

There was still time for Santos to score their goal of honor, in the last move of the game. Sandry took a free kick in the area and Eduardo Bauermann, with a header, deflected into the back of the net.

Palmeiras returns to the field next Thursday (9), when they receive Inter de Limeira, at 19:30; the day before, at 21:35, Santos faces São Bento, in Canindé.