Corinthians 3 x 0 Ponte Preta

By: dylan | September 23rd, 2008

This game was on Saturday, but better late than never……

Chicão nearly bites the badge off his shirt

I’ll give credit to Ponte Preta — they came to win. They got three corners by the fifth minute and they never let up, even after they went a man down in the second half. So hats off to Ponte for their attacking football; unfortunately, our future opponents won’t be so keen to try it after looking at the scoreline here.

Our lethal quartet was on the pitch together for the first time — Dentinho and Herrera up front, Douglas and Morais in midfield — but it was center-back Chicão who bagged the first goal. Was it a free kick? A penalty? Maybe a header from a corner? No, our defender ran into the opponent’s box and scored like a classic poacher, after André Santos and Herrera failed to do the job. This is Chicão’s seventh goal of the season, making him one of our five major goalscorers:

Herrera	striker	9
Douglas	midfielder	8
André Santos	left-back	7
Chicão	center-back	7
Dentinho	striker	7

The second half got off to a promising start when Ponte Preta defender Gum was sent off for dissent after committing a mere yellow-card foul. This was a gift to Corinthians, but also to every sportswriter in Brazil who was looking for an easy Tropa de Elite reference. (To prepare for this game, Ponte Preta gave their players a motivational speech from a former captain of BOPE, Rio’s elite police unit.)

It was mostly one-way traffic after the red card, but Ponte’s excellent goalie Aranha (one of the stars from this year’s Campeonato Paulista) kept the game at 1-0 until the dying moments. Two plays from Herrera sealed our victory. In the 88th minute, he popped the ball across to Morais, who scored the “easiest” goal of his career and his first for Corinthians. Three minutes later, Herrera sent the exact same cross to Douglas, who made it 3-0 at the final whistle.

Full highlights:

With this win, Corinthians is up to 58 points. Thanks to some surprising results — Avaí and Santo André both drew, and Vila Nova blew a 3-1 lead to lose 4-3 at Juventude — we’re now 11 points ahead of second place, and 13 points ahead of fifth place. Our year in purgatory is quickly coming to an end…

• Next up — Fifth-place Bragantino is our opponent tomorrow night, and it’s probably going to suck. It’s never a good sign when the players openly say that before a game, and sadly, they’re right. Expect to see “mad dog” Moradei and friends park the team bus in front of their goal and try to man-mark us to sleep.

Mano keeps telling the guys to settle these games sooner and stop making the endings so dramatic. As much as all good corintianos love to suffer, I hope they listen to him tomorrow, because an early goal is the only thing that will make the game watchable. At least that’s what I’m afraid of.