Filipe Luís between virtue and sin during the intercontinental final between Flamengo and PSG

The debate is timely on the eve of the Flamengo x PSG match on Wednesday. Predicting the future is risky, but there is little reason to admit that Filipe Luís intends to radically change everything he has built for 14 months in this winning Flamengo and which bears his fingerprints.

It is therefore possible to imagine a script for the game. Under normal conditions, it is expected that PSG will try to impose intense pressure on the Red and Black from the moment the ball comes out, stifling the first passes of the Flamengo defenders. And, considering this, even if he creates alternatives to long balls, whether for Bruno Henrique or Plata, Filipe Luís will guide his team to have the courage to play, to build from defenders and midfielders.

Which brings us to a curious conclusion. If Flamengo loses, the most likely outcome for a South American against the European champions, we will once again be plunged into the same discussion that followed the defeat to Bayern Munich in the Club World Cup. There, while intense German pressure stifled Flamengo’s ball flow, technical errors caused by the rival cost goals. And since the outcome was negative, it is this narrative that has become hegemonic when we remember the game.

Less talked about is the fact that it was precisely Flamengo’s style of play that allowed them to score two goals and tie the match during at least two periods of the match, one in each half. But, as Flamengo lost, Filipe Luís, pilot of the best coaching job of recent years in Ninho do Urubu, was just a conceit ready to show himself to the market through an aerial style. It never occurred to many people, in the heat of even an obvious defeat, that Flamengo or so many other teams are images of belief, the way their coaches believe they are closer to winning games.

As for the eternal debate about adapting or double betting, the mistake is trying to find instruction manuals on how to win games. There will be examples of victories and defeats on both sides. Firstly because there is no recipe. And then, because no one is able to choose the outcome. What you choose is how to try it. Due to Flamengo’s characteristics, the feeling is that the best way is to try to play their way.

And, in the end, there are inequalities, a fundamental element of current football. This type of game has become less of a tactical debate than a fight between a talented challenger and a “club-state” like PSG, which will be “at home” in Qatar. What changes is the context in relation to what happened during the Club World Cup.

If there the season and the temperature were hostile to the Europeans – and they still had three of the four semi-finalists -, this time it is the South American who arrives at the match at the end of a season which already has 74 matches played with his main team this year. A team which, at this Intercontinental, seems to be at the limit of its energy. On the other side, there will be a PSG who have experienced fluctuations in the first half of the European campaign, but who are the clear favorites. There is talent for Flamengo to be champion in a single match. It’s possible, but unlikely.