With two Chileans among its ranks —and one who currently defends the Catholic University shirt, but who during his time with “Fla” played three games in the current competition— Flamengo won the third Copa Libertadores this Saturday in Guayaquil (Ecuador). of its history by beating Athletico Paranaense 1-0 in the final with a goal from striker Gabriel Barbosa ‘Gabigol’, who became the top Brazilian scorer in the tournament, tied on 29 goals with Luizao.
We are talking about Arturo Vidal, Erick Pulgar and Mauricio Isla, members of the Rio de Janeiro team —Isla until June 2022, 2022— who thus joined the club of three-time Brazilian champions, where Sao Paulo, Palmeiras, Gremio and Santos are also present, after depriving Paranaense to win his first Libertadores. With this, the team from Curitiba has already lost two finals in the competition after the one in 2005.
As was the case in 2019 with his two goals in the final against River Plate, ‘Gabigol’ once again gave Flamengo a Libertadores and scored for the third time in a final, since he also scored a goal in the 2021 loss against Palmeiras.
This final was decided in the last minutes of the first half, and in the consequent aggregate. In that part of the match, central defender Pedro Henrique left Paranaense with ten players when he saw two yellow cards in nine minutes, and ‘Gabigol’ took advantage of that psychological blow to finish sinking ‘Furacao’.
Until minute 43, Athletico had fully controlled the game. He was the owner of the midfield and hadn’t allowed ‘Mengao’ to generate a single clear scoring chance for him, but then came Pedro Henrique’s expulsion in a hard tackle on Ayrton Lucas a few meters from the area.
There the team from Curitiba began to lose the final, since after the expulsion, coach Luiz Felipe Scolari preferred to wait for the break to restructure the team with a change, and in added time came the first goal of ‘Fla’.
In a play of markers between Éverton Ribeiro and Rodinei on the right flank, the Flamengo captain put a dream center so that ‘Gabigol’ could finish off the net at the far post, which unleashed the delirium of the more than 15,000 fans of the ‘Red and Black Nation’ present at the Monumental Stadium in Guayaquil.
Perhaps at that time it was too much prize for the team from Rio de Janeiro, which in its third final in four years of the Copa Libertadores had come out with the calm typical of a team accustomed to these big events, and wanted to cook the game over a slow fire, aware that the finals are not won in the first casts of the game.
On the other hand, Paranaense had immediately shown their teeth in the first minutes to try to put some nerves in his body, with a cross shot by Vítor Roque and a play where Vitinho stole the ball from David Luiz and finished off the body with almost no angle of the flamenco goalkeeper Santos.
The second half suggested that Flamengo would go on the attack to seal the final and they did not disappoint, because in the first few minutes they were close to scoring the second goal in a one-on-one between ‘Gabigol’ and goalkeeper Bento and a shot Poisoned Pedro who went over the crossbar.
Then Scolari put all the meat on the grill to try to equalize and was about to achieve it with a point-blank shot from Uruguayan striker Agustín Canobbio, but the epic was not on the side of ‘Furacao’ this time.
Vidal entered the second half and was rebuked by the Ecuadorian public, who shouted “he is not going to the World Cup” in the middle of Chile’s dispute in the TAS for removing Ecuador from Qatar 2022. The “King” received a yellow card in the 74′.
“NOT GOING TO THE WORLD CUP!” It is the cry that was heard, after the entry of 🇨🇱 Arturo Vidal in the CONMEBOL final #Liberators. pic.twitter.com/XU0bMqGA7q
– ESPN Ecuador (@ESPNEcuador) October 29, 2022
Source: www.elmostrador.cl
