The first Majestic for Portuguese coach Vítor Pereira could be the last if autocrat Vladimir Putin decides to carry out his threat: “Whoever interferes will lead to consequences never before experienced in history”.
Sounds like a bluff, but who doubts what Putin is capable of after all he’s done?
The game scheduled for this Saturday (5), at Morumbi, has no greater significance for the classification of the two teams for the playoffs of Paulistinha and will not serve to measure the ability of the rookie alvinegro coach, although it could mean a new crisis for Rogério Ceni .
Since April 2017, Corinthians has not won at the rival’s home, two tricolor victories and two draws.
It will be the 344th Majestic in history, the 183rd for the state championship, with a wide Corinthians advantage, 130 to 104 and 67 to 58.
Selective memory —at this moment when so many are taking stock of their lives because an icy ex-KGB agent in Moscow finds himself dealing with another deranged abject comedian in Kiev—relives the most striking classics between the teams in which the brothers Sócrates and Raí shone, two football stars and valiant political beings, humanists by definition and family background.
The decision of the Campeonato Paulista in 1957 is one of those unforgettable games, a 3-1 victory in São Paulo at Pacaembu, in what became known as “the afternoon of the bottles”, the result of Fiel’s dissatisfaction with the third goal in an alleged impediment to Maurinho.
Yes, at that time there was already violence among fans — and the pizza promoted by the tricolor godfather of a 7-year-old boy from Corinthians was the bitterest of his life, today multiplied by ten.
Of course, since then there have been several games to overcome that pain, but the first pain you never forget how famous Washington Olivetto about the first bra.
In 1990, at Morumbi, Corinthians celebrated the first Brazilian title by beating São Paulo 1-0, a goal by Tupãzinho and there was no reason to fly bottles.
Eternal games do not need to be decisive, as it was not the rout in Itaquera, in 2015, with the alvinegro already six-time Brazilian champion, with a mixed team, 6-1 over the tricolor holders.
Neither Vladimir Vladimirovitch Putin, 69, nor Volodymyr Olexandrovytch Zelensky, 44, are worried about similar reminiscences from Russian and Ukrainian citizens because their taste is for blood.
That FIFA and the International Olympic Committee punish Russia and expel it from the sports community, as was once done with South Africa because of apartheid, is fair.
That they have never taken the same measure in relation to the countless interventions, and far from their borders, of the United States around the world, reveals the size of the hypocrisy and pusillanimity of the sports entities.
Because if the football fan’s memory is selective, indignation at wars has to be above it to avoid, among other horrors, the racism of the international media shocked by the suffering of Europeans.
Never has the media been so impressed by the fate of Africans, Asians, napalm in Vietnam, etc.
It remains to wish that the Majestic 344 is just one more and not remembered as the last one, because, if it is the last one, there will be no one to remember it, except, perhaps, the cockroaches.
How far have we, the humans, got to a project that didn’t work out.
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