As the Brazilian league draws to a close, recent rounds appear to have been overshadowed by the build-up to the final of the domestic cup taking place over the next two Wednesdays between the two most popular clubs of a giant country.
Brazilian football loves big cup games. The league is all very well — it keeps all the teams in activity throughout the season — but there is always the chance of one team running away with the title as seems to be the case this year with Palmeiras. The Brazil Cup, or Copa do Brasil, meanwhile, is an all-or-nothing, winner-take-all contest over the course of two home and away legs.
The cup match-up this year is especially titanic because it pits Flamengo of Rio, the best-supported team in the country, against Corinthians of Sao Paulo, the best-supported team from the biggest city. By a quirk of fate, these two teams have never before met in a final of this magnitude.
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In January 1991, they faced each other in the Super-Copa, a curtain-raiser to the season featuring the champions of the league and the cup. But that, in comparison to these two games, was a glorified friendly. This is the real deal.
Flamengo, of course, have another final later this month — the one-off decider of South America’s Copa Libertadores, when, on Oct. 29 in Guayaquil, Ecuador, they take on another Brazilian opponent in Luiz Felipe Scolari’s Athletico Paranaense. The stakes are bigger in that game, too — it opens the door to the Club World Cup, and the chance to have a crack at the European champions.
But the Libertadores final has an air of David and Goliath about it. Athletico, from the smaller, provincial city of Curitiba, are a hugely impressive, forward thinking club. But they cannot hope to have the same weight, the same depth of tradition and representation as Flamengo — or of Corinthians.
Flamengo against Corinthians, then, is the clash of the titans, of clubs with fan bases greater than the entire populations of most other South American countries. And, as the big games approach, they are looking even more fascinating.
