Paranaense Fail to Beat 2nd String São Paulo.

By: Mauro | August 13th, 2008

On one side you had Paranaense who was too unorganized and are riding quite the bad spell, on the other, you had the 2007 Brasileirao champions who decided to field a secondary team of youngsters who have had little time together on a football pitch.

And dammit, I love it when I’m right.

While they exhibited lots of willingness, the lack of experience for Sao Paulo’s many young players was vital and resulted in their inability to score or dominate the match in any sort of organized sense. In many cases it seemed that Paranaense keeper, Galatto was merely a spectator.

São Paulo is ‘reserving’ their players for this weekend’s big match against league leaders Gremio for the Brasileirao championship.

With the exception of back up keeper Bosco (33 years-old), midfielder Junior (35 years-old) and defender Juninho, the other 8 players were between 17 and 21 years old.

Still, there are many things to take from this match for São Paulo, for example, the good showing of many of their young future stars and, of course, the final result which ended 0-0, favoring neither side. São Paulo are now forced to win the return match back in their stadium.

The local side fielded all their starting players which says a lot about the state of their game and their deserved place on the table in the current Brasileirao. Still, it wasn’t a terrible match (don’t get me wrong, it wasn’t great either). Paranaense looked to dig up a go ahead goal in the form of striker Chico but found, in keeper Bosco, a very agile and well positioned keeper.

Julio Dos Santos, Antonio Carlos and Nei had chances on goal but failed to convert due to poor aim.

At the end of the match, São Paulo played nine men behind the ball in order to leave the stadium with a clean sheet for Bosco and they got just that. This bore-fest ended 0-0.

I had this match ending 1-1, I wasn’t far off, I just expected more of a match from these two and namely some goals.

The return leg is in São Paulo and is in two weeks, let’s hope one of these two wants to make an effort to advance by then.

Feel free to check the CONMEBOL website for results and information about upcoming matches and for those of you in need of a bracket to get your heads around the competition, get one here.