Libertadores and Copa do Brasil: The end is near!

By: Bruno Romani | May 17th, 2007

Few Brazilians clubs have action during the week at this time of the year. This is so because Copa Libertadores and Copa do Brasil are coming to an end.For the South America’s most important tournament, two Brazilian sides played the first leg of the quarter-finals, both away from home.

Grêmio visited Defensor from Uruguay and had a very poor performance. Before the first minute of the game, the Uruguayans, who never went this far in the Libertadores, scored with a header. The home team had one of its players red carded with 36 minutes into the first-half, but just 6 minutes later the second goal game through another header. To make things worse, the good midfielder Diego Souza got red-carded AFTER the game was over, for excessive complaining. It seems Grêmio believes a lot in what it can do at home, but this time around the club lost itself. The 2-0 advantage to Defensor seems to make a Brazilian party in the tournament more distant in 2007.

Santos, on the other hand, played with intelligence against América in Mexico City and managed to come up with a 0-0 draw. Despite the fact that the Mexican side was saving its main players for the semifinals of the national championship, Santos left the pitch satisfied with the draw, given that the altitude always scares Brazilian clubs. The only good chance for América appeared in the second-half, but Fábio Costa denied it. Now, Santos hopes América advances to the finals of the Mexican league so that the club plays against another team B. What seemed to be a tough rival turns up to be a good deal for Santos. It amazes me the stupidity of the overlapping calendars.

Copa do Brasil

In Brazil, the semifinals of the Copa do Brasil had two traditional sides from Rio and two small clubs: All the ingredients to make the two matches interesting only to the fans of the four clubs and TV Globo, which is very well known as a Rio channel.

In Florianópolis, Figueirense scored 2-0 against Botafogo and sees the chance of reaching for the first time the finals of a tournament at the national level. The club scored two but missed many other chances of destroying Botafogo. The TV Globo executives must be getting shivers to imagine a final with Figueirense.

At the Maracanã, Fluminense played against Brasiliense, club from second division runners up of the 2002 Copa do Brasil, and saved the night for the Globo executives. The final scored of 4-2 forces Brasiliense to win by 2-0 next week. The highlight of the night, however, happened in the second-half when Fluminense had a 3-2 lead. Héber Roberto lopes, one of the most controversial referees in Brazil, gave a penalty to Fluminense. Brasiliense’s keeper Guto denied the goal to Carlos Alberto, but the ref. made the ex-Corinthians midfielder take the penalty again by thinking that Guto moved towards the ball before he blew the whistle.

The fact is that since CBF prohibited the clubs that play the Libertadores from joining the Copa do Brasil, we keep getting these alternative matches.