Opinion – Tostão: São Paulo did not sign any special players

Even considering that it’s the beginning of the season, that the coaches take advantage of the state ones to experiment and that the new hires need time to adapt to the new teams and clubs, I don’t expect São Paulo to form a team, with the players that arrived, much higher than last year.

The contractors are good, but not so much. Excessive expectation is much greater than reality. None are exceptional. In Brazil, it’s almost always like that, a pharaonic woohoo is created for very little, for any good moment, for a beautiful move, for a goal. The illusion ends, sometimes quickly, and those who exalted begin to demand distorted performances, not in accordance with reality.

I like Nikão very much, but I’m afraid the same thing will happen to him as happened to Pablo. The two shone at Athletico, an amazing club, on and off the field. Patrick, ex-Inter, alternated good and bad moments. He stands out more for his physical strength and aggressiveness on the left, not as a point guard, as he played against Ituano.

Alisson has always been a supporting player at Cruzeiro and Grêmio. He was in and out of the team frequently. It was enough for the new goalkeeper Jandrei to take a penalty for the hurried ones to ask for his title. Volpi is a good goalkeeper, on the same level as Jandrei. São Paulo did not hire a reinforcement for the goal, a Weverton.

I repeat, São Paulo made good signings, but did not bring any special players, unlike Corinthians, which, with the new athletes, greatly improved their technical quality, as they already demonstrated at the end of last year. But it lacks a great striker. There is a need to exchange passes with more speed and intensity from one intermediary to the other, there is no pressure to recover the ball and there is a lack of movement from the three players in front.

This Wednesday (2), Corinthians, at home, face Santos, a modest team, but with an expectation close to reality, even with the hiring of Ricardo Goulart, a good reinforcement. In Vila Belmiro, Santos almost always grows, because the ghosts of the stars of the past are reborn on the pitch to inspire the team in the search for victories.

In the match against Botafogo de Ribeirão Preto, commentator Richarlyson, from SporTV, called attention, more than once, to the fact that Santos’ midfield was advancing and that the defenders were still leaning against the penalty area, leaving huge spaces between sectors for the other team’s counterattacks. This is a frequent difficulty of almost all Brazilian teams.

Defenders don’t need to score from the midfield line, as big European teams successfully do, but they could position themselves in an intermediate zone, between the box and the center of the pitch. With this, they would avoid large spaces behind the defenders and between them and the midfield. For this, it is also necessary to have defenders and goalkeepers attentive and fast, to reach the balls launched before the opponents.

We all need, in all activities, to learn, evolve and modernize. However, in today’s polarized society, including the world of football, the number of people unable to see, understand, and accept what is different is increasing. Diversity is fundamental in football and in life. Worse still are those who misrepresent the facts so that their preferences are met. There is a dictatorship, an imposition of ideas, which annihilates thought.