“With the VAR, Flamengo will have much more difficulties to beat us & rdquor ;. The phrase of the president of Atlético Mineiro, Serge Coelhoafter the triumph of his team on penalties against the rubronegro from Rio de Janeiro in the Supercopa do Brasil feeds the trail of controversies that have arisen between the two clubs in recent weeks.
Galo, champion of the Brasileirao and the Copa do Brasil, and Mengao, second in the league championship, entered into an institutional pulse, with the CBF as the theoretical judge, to determine the venue for a newly created competition, which has taken root hard. Flamengo got away with it, and from here a new manifest enmity was born between the clubs. One more.
In recent seasons, coinciding with the sporting rebirth of the most popular club in Brazil, new rivalries have emerged, which, in some cases, have turned into animosities. This is the case of hostilities with Palmeiras.
In 2016, Flamengo, pushed by a media storm, already “smelled & rdquor; the title… but the reaction did not reach him and the champions would end up being from the albiverdes from São Paulo. And from there came the nickname of “cheirinho & rdquor; (‘little smell’ in Spanish) with which he appeals to each and every one of the red-black defeats, and also a grudge, which will hardly heal. The same will happen but with the At. Mineiro, which is the third superpower of the moment in discord, as the protagonist.
OPEN WAR WITH YOUR ADVERSARIES
Flamengo is no longer sympathetic. His alignment with the Bolsonaro government during the pandemic has not helped either. And not for an ideological question, because Brazilian soccer, with few exceptions, has not been wet before the genocidal policies of the extreme right-wing executive, which have skewed 646,000 lives.
The president of Mengao, Rodolfo Landim, is so in tune with Bolsonaro that his name was considered to be the vice president in the October presidential candidacy. The Rio de Janeiro club has become the executing arm of government policies in the world of sport, beginning with the tooth and nail defense of the return of the public to the stadiums, which meant that Flamengo was left, on several occasions, isolated defending this claim.
Another pillar of this alliance is the ‘Ley del Mandante’, which authorizes local clubs to negotiate broadcasting rights directly with television channels. His objective is none other than to torpedo the interests of TV Globo, whom Bolsonaro deeply hates.
Flamengo is and acts like the government teamwhich means having institutional prebends, which also extend to the offices of the CBF headquarters in Rio de Janeiro, and which can make a difference in very even tournaments.
Their rivals are not envious, but rather fear that they are not competing under the same circumstances and this feeling is very present among the ‘crooked’ throughout the country. And the response of the Flamengo management moves between the arrogance of a great and a false victimhood that does not convince anyone and that has a boomerang effect since it fuels animosity even more.
