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With each passing round, Cruzeiro strays further from the dream of returning to Serie A of the Brazilian Championship. The heartbreaking event, this time, was the 2-1 loss to the inflection point Ponte Preta in Campinas on Tuesday night. Luiz Felipe Scolari, officially, still does not talk about planning for 2021. First, he wants to guarantee the team in Serie B, since the fight when he arrived was against relegation.
The distance to the G-4 (goal at the start of the competition) at the end of the 31st day could be six points, due to the setback of Juventude against Operário. With the defeat in Campinas, Cruzeiro continued with 40, nine from the Rio Grande do Sul team. Has the time come, then, to start planning 2021 with the Serie B team?
Felipão says that before this matter is addressed, Cruzeiro needs to reach the necessary points to guarantee permanence in the second division. On their accounts, as stated in other interviews, 43/44 points provide security.
– I have to solve my part in the field, and my part we have been talking about some situations, but, first of all, we have to talk about the current situation. The current situation continues to worry us, and we hope to have a definitive situation of conversation, veracity and details, when we have the points guaranteed at least for the stay in Serie B.
Luiz Felipe Scolari Felipão Cruzeiro – Photo: Bruno Haddad
Despite the discourse of continuing to think about 2020, says Felipão, treating the result against Ponte Preta as discouraging, it is necessary to reflect on what will be done in 2021.
– We work every day to have details of a better future team than we are today. (The result) Is it discouraging? Of course it is disheartening for everyone. Not only for you, for the fans, but for the players and the coach, especially.
“We have to make a reflection, in every way, to know what we are really going to do with the Cruzeiro next year and what we can do, for everything that has happened this year.”
On the defeat of the Bridge
Cruzeiro went ahead very fast, at 10 minutes, with Manoel. Then, little bothered the opposing goalkeeper. He also suffered little, but had two failures that the Bridge did not forgive.
Felipão was asked if the reactive style of play, without volume, would be the most possible to present himself with the current squad. He preferred not to be on this side, admitting only the difficulties in the Campinas duel.
– Today Yes. Not the other day. The other day we were better, on other occasions we were better, creating more, but today this is what happened. We have lost games in terms of details, positioning, attention, that we are not taking in certain bids, and we pay a higher price.
Ponte Preta x Cruzeiro, 31st round Serie B – Photo: Álvaro Jr / PontePress
Felipão was also asked if the “sin” of the team was not trying to fix the match when they won 1-0. The speech adopted by the coach was more aimed at praising the Pontense team than at criticizing Cruzeiro. According to him, the explanation of the errors must be given to the players, showing what is necessary to evolve.
– We sinned, because we also had 11 opponents on the other side. They also play the game trying to win, they put themselves in situations that don’t give us opportunities and we lose. There is no use trying to explain it to them, I have to try to explain it to the players, to improve the situation of my athletes, so that we can have performances as we already had.
“It is not that we play with the ball under our arms … we want to score two or three goals, but the point is that we did not achieve it and, in addition to not having achieved it, the rival also has players who put us in this situation.”
Still in the team’s reactive stance and also speaking of having modified the team only after the goals from Ponte Preta, Felipão said that if a culprit for the result must be found, it was him.
– My intention was to win the game. We did not win. The result was not what we expected, so we lose and we have to find the culprit. The culprit was me. I didn’t change, I didn’t do this, I didn’t do that, I was the culprit.