Felipe Leaves Corinthians Further Away From Relegation

By: Bruno Romani | November 12th, 2007

Felipe is the man. With just few months at Corinthians, the goalkeeper is imprinting his name in the most dramatic pages of the club’s history. This Sunday, Corinthians and Goiás played a battle in Goiânia as both clubs try to escape relegation. The winner was going to push the loser to the bottom four. Paulo Baier scored for the locals and set the 40 thousand fans in fire. Ten minutes later, Fábio Ferreira tied for Corinthians. Next, Felipe kept saving the timão. But again, a defender from Corinthians made an unnecessary penalty.With just 15 minutes left, Paulo Baier, the man who had never missed a penalty in the season and always scores from free-kicks, took it. And Felipe flew to save the ball that was going to send Corinthians to the relegation zone. Felipe, a name to be remembered.

In Belo Horizonte, the second team to ensure an unwanted place in série B was Juventude. The home team, Atlético-MG, crushed the gauchos with a 4-1. The first goal was scored by defender Leandro Almeida. He is national team material. Remember, you heard about him here first.

Fighting relegation, Naútico won 4-0 against poor América-RN. Paraná, on the other hand, visited Botafogo and lost 3-2. Relegation is very close to the club who played its first Copa Libertadores earlier in the season. Vasco, who is not completely free from the relegation ghost, was beatin Figueirense with a 3-0. I took a 15 minutes break from the match to have a beer. When I returned, Figueirense had the 3-3 draw.

In the race for a place in the Copa Libertadores, Cruzeiro failed again in an important situation. Alex scored for Inter-RS the only goal of the match with 2 minutes into the second-half’s stoppage time. Grêmio visited the champions São Paulo and lost with a goal from the spot by keeper Rogério Ceni. São Paulo has an impressive 17 points advantage over Santos, the second club.

Flamengo and Santos played the best match of the weekend. Flamengo fans, with 87 thousand people, broke the record of spectators of the league, showing again what club has the best fans in Brazil. The match had incredible chances for both sides and Fabio Costa and Bruno had lots of work to do. At the end, Souza, with a header, scored for the locals the only goal of the match, leaving Flamengo very close to an unthinkable spot in next year’s Libertadores.