Mustache-less Ypiranga Is No Match For The Mighty Sport

Ypiranga misses Ademir Müller's mustache, and whatever it was that Jorge Guerra (a marginally talented left-fullback who spent time on loan with Sport and Santa Cruz, and at Sport gained a bizarre cult hero status) gave them. Their goalie is named Jedai (if the Portuguese phonetic spelling throws you off, think about Ioda) and that is pretty funny, but funny doesn't win ballgames.

Ciro scored two, and so did Guto, Assis scored for Ypiranga, and I didn't see any of the goals because only Santa Cruz-Cabense was televised.

Santa Cruz and Cabense are two good bad teams (if that makes any sense) and they played a spirited game. Santa Cruz may yet play well this year, but they aren't playing well right now. The players don't seem to know where their teammates are, and they are made up of Sport castoffs (Gustavo, Sandro, and Bilica). Cabense looked like a team of bad players drilled to perfection. They couldn't finish their moves, but they passed the ball around well and the players made good runs to open spaces for the attack. According to wikipedia (which is never wrong) Cabense's manager is one Rogério Zimmerman. Whatever his name is, he did a good job tonight. One further note -- Cabense used to be known as Distilaria Esporte Clube (translate that one on your own), a name infinitely superior to Associação Desportiva Cabense.

Santa Cruz didn't have a sponsor on the front of their jerseys, except for goalie André Zuba, which made me wonder if he had given up on his team and negotiated his own sponsorship deal in which all of the money (other than his manager's 10%, of course) went to him. It was only during the post-match interviews that I noticed (How much attention do you expect me to pay to a game between teams like Santa and Cabense?) that Santa's field players did in fact have "Grupo Saúde" on the backs of their shirts, spread unobtrusively across their shoulders. When I was little my parents had separate health insurance policies, and I was covered by both, so sometimes I went to one doctor and sometimes I went to another. One of the insurance companies was "Group Health" (at least that's what my parents called it), "Grupo Sáude" in Portuguese, but I was a little kid and I called it "Grue Pelth" and was embarrassingly old before I realized what the company's real name was. But that is neither here nor there.

Náutico gave up a late goal to the one and only Nêgo Pai to tie Sete de Setembro 1-1 in Garanhuns and fall six points behind Sport. Náutico is putting together a decent team this year, but the pieces are falling into place too late to challenge for the first stage of the Campeonato Pernambucano.

Someone scored against Sport for the first time this year, but that's okay. It was going to happen eventually, and it's better that it wasn't Náutico or Santa that did it, because their supporters would have been insufferable going on an on about it. It would have been funny, though, if the first goal scored against Sport had come during, say, a 3-1 victory over Náutico. Náutico fans would have talked about it for a week as if their team had won.

Sunday Sport plays at home against Petrolina (currently battling Vitória for last place), so I'll be able to see the game and write a more credible match report.