Sport defeated Petrolina 3-1 (the "1" in that scoreline is embarrassing) this afternoon, and Sidny was easily the worst player in the stadium. Weldon entered at halftime, taking Guto's place, and scored twice. Durval scored a third time before uncharacteristically lackadaisical defending allowed Petrolina to score a consolation goal (and I hope it keeps them warm tonight).
The first half was somewhat interesting, with Petrolina defending and Sport passing the ball well but without much effect. Sidny completed, at most, 10% of his passes, defended poorly, and saw the referee receive applause when he received a yellow card. Once again, Nelsinho took him out at halftime. Igor moved over to right back and the team switched from a 3-5-2 to a 4-4-2 as Fumagalli entered. Igor was, again, vastly superior to Sidny. When César got hurt, Jonas came on and underscored Igor's quality, as Igor moved back to central defense and played as well as ever.
Sport put a lot more pressure on Petrolina in the second half, Fumagalli and Paulo Baier played well together in midfield, and Weldon showed that he really wants a big money move. The result was never in question, so the scoreless first half wasn't frustrating and the goals in the second half weren't cause for elation. Sport did put some nice moves together in the second half, but they didn't result in any goals. It is possible to see Paulo Baier fitting in with his teammates, and if the team had a professional football player to play right full-back then Sport would really be something. Right now, thanks to Sidny and Jonas, Sport isn't quite something (which doesn't mean Sport is nothing, which goes to show the limitations of these binary terms). Even without being something, Sport has all but won the first stage of the state championship, and any result but a Santa Cruz victory in tomorrow's Lovers' Classic will clear the path for Sport. So sleep easy tonight, Sport fans, the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1817 Trophy will almost surely remain in Sport's hands.
sábado, 31 de janeiro de 2009
Sport Will Defeat Petrolina Today
This afternoon Sport will host Petrolina (three points from six games), currently locked in a heated battle for last place with Vitória (two points from six games). The outcome of the game is not in doubt, only the final score could surprise. Petrolina is not the sort of team that you can write much about.
Weldon will be on the bench, where he belongs, for this game. Sport's lineup will be the same as it has been for the last two games, which unfortunately means that Sidny will get to run around wearing the same clothing as the professional football players. Most likely the crowd will spend the first half shouting abuse at him, at halftime he will be replaced by Jonas, and the crowd will spend the second half saying things like "he's bad, but at least he isn't Sidny."
Tomorrow Santa Cruz plays Náutico in the Stadium of the Afflicted (not a translation error), because afflicted is what you are when Náutico is your team. Santa Cruz is still three points behind Sport, Náutico six. Should that game end in anything but a Santa Cruz victory, Sport will have one hand on the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1817 Trophy (also not a translation error).
Weldon will be on the bench, where he belongs, for this game. Sport's lineup will be the same as it has been for the last two games, which unfortunately means that Sidny will get to run around wearing the same clothing as the professional football players. Most likely the crowd will spend the first half shouting abuse at him, at halftime he will be replaced by Jonas, and the crowd will spend the second half saying things like "he's bad, but at least he isn't Sidny."
Tomorrow Santa Cruz plays Náutico in the Stadium of the Afflicted (not a translation error), because afflicted is what you are when Náutico is your team. Santa Cruz is still three points behind Sport, Náutico six. Should that game end in anything but a Santa Cruz victory, Sport will have one hand on the Constitutionalist Revolution of 1817 Trophy (also not a translation error).
quinta-feira, 29 de janeiro de 2009
Sport Signed a Fullback
Yay!
He plays on the left, where he will be Dutra's backup. What?!
Bruno Teles has left Grêmio for a year-long loan with Sport. This is important, as Sport had nobody at all (not even a promising youngster, apparently) to play if Dutra (who is almost as old as the Campeonato Brasileiro) were to get hurt. So this is good news.
The problem with this good news is that it still doesn't solve the huge problem known as Sidny.
He plays on the left, where he will be Dutra's backup. What?!
Bruno Teles has left Grêmio for a year-long loan with Sport. This is important, as Sport had nobody at all (not even a promising youngster, apparently) to play if Dutra (who is almost as old as the Campeonato Brasileiro) were to get hurt. So this is good news.
The problem with this good news is that it still doesn't solve the huge problem known as Sidny.
quarta-feira, 28 de janeiro de 2009
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.
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.
Sport Takes on Ypiranga
I wish I could write a smart, funny preview of this game, but I can't. Sport will field the same team as Sunday. Sport will probably achieve the same result. Sidny will still suck. That's about all there is to say.
Ypiranga looked like a team with potential a year or two ago. The team from Santa Cruz do Capibaribe gave the big teams a lot of trouble, but couldn't turn that into any measure of success in the Série C. Last year Ypiranga didn't even qualify for the Série C. They had a manager with a nice mustache, Ademir Müller, but he's gone.
The game won't be on TV, and that's probably for the best.
Ypiranga looked like a team with potential a year or two ago. The team from Santa Cruz do Capibaribe gave the big teams a lot of trouble, but couldn't turn that into any measure of success in the Série C. Last year Ypiranga didn't even qualify for the Série C. They had a manager with a nice mustache, Ademir Müller, but he's gone.
The game won't be on TV, and that's probably for the best.
domingo, 25 de janeiro de 2009
Sport Defeats Pernambuco's Other Canada
Various supporters’ groups took busses, a rumored twelve busses in all, to Caruaru today. I was invited to eat lunch at a once-elite club with one of the club’s directores, so I went to rub shoulders with the semi-important (which makes me almost special) rather than take the bus to the game. It’s just as well that I didn’t go, because I might have ended up too drunk to see straight, and that would have affected my ability to describe the game and I would have ended up writing something like Nelson Rodrigues. Who is a great writer, so maybe I should have gone and done just that. Well, I won’t have a hangover tomorrow but neither will this win any awards, so I guess we can call it not particularly even.
The director of the club had to leave to attend some sort of emergency, but there I was, so I ate lunch at the club. It was expensive, slow to arrive, and not very good. The filet mignon flambéed in cognac was unpleasantly bitter and the less said about the chicken the better. Dinner’s pork chops simmered in a mango-rum sauce were a vast improvement.
After that horrible lunch I had hoped that Sport would save my afternoon, and Guto’s goal three minutes into the match seemed to confirm my optimism. Unfortunately, the game calmed down to a boring equilibrium in which Sport may have created a few more chances but neither team excited the imagination. Had I been so drunk I was seeing double I would probably be writing something more interesting, but unfortunately I saw the whole game.
Paulo Baier is very good. So are Ciro, Sandro Goiano, and Sport’s central defenders Durval, Igor, and César. Hamilton still has a lot of trouble passing the ball to his teammates, but he does very well when he doesn’t have the ball. Dutra is good. Sidny started because Nelsinho didn’t like the way Jonas played. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonas plays again on Wednesday, because Sidny was terrible. This continues to be the team’s biggest problem. Guto scored a nice goal after a spectacular pass from Sandro Goiano, but was otherwise anonymous.
Porto was alright, but none of their players stood out This was a game that Sport should have won far more easily. Sport spent the entire game in a 3-5-2, which annoyed the supporters but got the job done. It may be that Nelsinho thinks that without any help at all from the right fullback and without a proper partner for Ciro it is better to bet on the defense. His record since arriving in Recife speaks for itself, so I’ll enjoy the three point lead over Porto, and hope that a decent right fullback arrives soon.
The director of the club had to leave to attend some sort of emergency, but there I was, so I ate lunch at the club. It was expensive, slow to arrive, and not very good. The filet mignon flambéed in cognac was unpleasantly bitter and the less said about the chicken the better. Dinner’s pork chops simmered in a mango-rum sauce were a vast improvement.
After that horrible lunch I had hoped that Sport would save my afternoon, and Guto’s goal three minutes into the match seemed to confirm my optimism. Unfortunately, the game calmed down to a boring equilibrium in which Sport may have created a few more chances but neither team excited the imagination. Had I been so drunk I was seeing double I would probably be writing something more interesting, but unfortunately I saw the whole game.
Paulo Baier is very good. So are Ciro, Sandro Goiano, and Sport’s central defenders Durval, Igor, and César. Hamilton still has a lot of trouble passing the ball to his teammates, but he does very well when he doesn’t have the ball. Dutra is good. Sidny started because Nelsinho didn’t like the way Jonas played. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonas plays again on Wednesday, because Sidny was terrible. This continues to be the team’s biggest problem. Guto scored a nice goal after a spectacular pass from Sandro Goiano, but was otherwise anonymous.
Porto was alright, but none of their players stood out This was a game that Sport should have won far more easily. Sport spent the entire game in a 3-5-2, which annoyed the supporters but got the job done. It may be that Nelsinho thinks that without any help at all from the right fullback and without a proper partner for Ciro it is better to bet on the defense. His record since arriving in Recife speaks for itself, so I’ll enjoy the three point lead over Porto, and hope that a decent right fullback arrives soon.
Sport-Porto Today
Porto is the other team from Caruaru, the first team being Central. Porto is a relatively new club, founded in 1983, and has risen to become a middling power at the state level. Porto was runner-up in the state championship in 1997 and 1998, a feat that no team from the interior of the state had ever achieved. No team from the interior would match that feat until 2007, when Central equaled its kid brother’s best. Porto has had more success developing players who go on to star with other teams (Araújo, Josué, Diogo, and Nildo chief among them, although I know people who refuse to say Josué’s name, and as we speak Diogo is squandering a not inconsiderable talent) than it has had in official competitions. In this sense Porto is a little like Canada (Bruce Grobbelaar and Owen Hargreaves), which surely makes Pernambuco the only state with two Canadas in the first division. Take that, Bahia!
Porto’s latest promise is Guega, a 22-year old midfielder who is currently the Campeonato Pernambucano’s leading scorer with five goals. If he can keep it up, he will be the third player from a small team to lead the goal scorers, after Porto’s Lêniton in 1998 and Itacuruba’s Kelson in 2004.
The game has been moved from Porto’s Estádio Antônio Inácio da Silva, which has a maximum capacity of 4,000 to 6,000, depending on the source, (and if 6,000 ever fit into that stadium it will be with 3,000 sitting on the shoulders of the people unlucky enough to arrive first), to Central’s Lacerdão. The Lacerdão is a cool stadium, occupying an entire block in the very center of Caruaru, which can hold 20,000 fans. Sport promises to take twelve busses of fans to the game, and many more will make the ninety minute trip in their cars.
Nelsinho has said that Sport will return to the 3-5-2 formation that the team used to being the championship, and Sport will dress only two forwards, Ciro and Guto. Luciano Henrique is more than capable of playing as a forward, so Sport will probably start with Ciro and Luciano Henrique as the forwards, with Guto on the bench, Paulo Baier, Hamilton, and Sandro Goiano in the midfield along with Dutra, and someone else on the right side. Sidny has not shown that he is capable or willing to be Sport’s right fullback, and Jonas just isn’t very good. At some point, if Sport doesn’t sign a new player, Moacir will probably make a start at that position. Today may not be the day, but Nelsinho is quickly losing confidence in his obvious options.
The two teams are tied for first place, but Porto has the edge on goal difference. Sport’s support will be much larger and more vocal than Porto’s, and Porto is playing in the same city but not in the normal stadium, so the home-field advantage may be negligible. That said, Porto is a fast team and could certainly cause problems for Sport. Porto’s manager, Adelmo Soares, surely knows about Sport’s problems on the right side and will take advantage of them. Santa Cruz is three points behind the leaders and Náutico is four points back, so a win today will put Sport in a commanding position halfway through the first round of the championship.
Porto’s latest promise is Guega, a 22-year old midfielder who is currently the Campeonato Pernambucano’s leading scorer with five goals. If he can keep it up, he will be the third player from a small team to lead the goal scorers, after Porto’s Lêniton in 1998 and Itacuruba’s Kelson in 2004.
The game has been moved from Porto’s Estádio Antônio Inácio da Silva, which has a maximum capacity of 4,000 to 6,000, depending on the source, (and if 6,000 ever fit into that stadium it will be with 3,000 sitting on the shoulders of the people unlucky enough to arrive first), to Central’s Lacerdão. The Lacerdão is a cool stadium, occupying an entire block in the very center of Caruaru, which can hold 20,000 fans. Sport promises to take twelve busses of fans to the game, and many more will make the ninety minute trip in their cars.
Nelsinho has said that Sport will return to the 3-5-2 formation that the team used to being the championship, and Sport will dress only two forwards, Ciro and Guto. Luciano Henrique is more than capable of playing as a forward, so Sport will probably start with Ciro and Luciano Henrique as the forwards, with Guto on the bench, Paulo Baier, Hamilton, and Sandro Goiano in the midfield along with Dutra, and someone else on the right side. Sidny has not shown that he is capable or willing to be Sport’s right fullback, and Jonas just isn’t very good. At some point, if Sport doesn’t sign a new player, Moacir will probably make a start at that position. Today may not be the day, but Nelsinho is quickly losing confidence in his obvious options.
The two teams are tied for first place, but Porto has the edge on goal difference. Sport’s support will be much larger and more vocal than Porto’s, and Porto is playing in the same city but not in the normal stadium, so the home-field advantage may be negligible. That said, Porto is a fast team and could certainly cause problems for Sport. Porto’s manager, Adelmo Soares, surely knows about Sport’s problems on the right side and will take advantage of them. Santa Cruz is three points behind the leaders and Náutico is four points back, so a win today will put Sport in a commanding position halfway through the first round of the championship.
Assinar:
Postagens (Atom)
