EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – The day before Fluminense’s Club World Cup opener against Borussia Dortmund, it was fairly easy to count the disparities between the two sides, big and small. For starters, Fluminense manager Renato Gaucho hoped it would be blisteringly hot in a way that would be familiar to players based in Brazil and out of place for those who call Germany home. Instead, the sides were treated to a mild day with some drizzle in the New York suburbs. It was not the main difference he had in mind, though.
“It’s like what I said about going shopping,” Gaucho said in his pre-match remarks on Monday. “What do you want, lobster? What do you want, shrimp? You can’t get it for a fiver, right? And that’s the difference. Financially speaking, they can get whoever they want. They can sign whoever they want because they have the money … People want the omelet but they won’t give you the eggs to make an omelet.”
Fluminense, though, overcame their obstacles just fine on Tuesday. In a 0-0 draw at MetLife Stadium, it was they — not last season’s UEFA Champions League finalists Dortmund — who looked more likely to win, outshooting the opposition 14-7. They may have left something to be desired in attack, mustering just 0.65 expected goals along the way, but they were not only up for the task; they outperformed Dortmund in most meaningful categories. They were not the only ones, either.
Fluminense were one of six South American teams to go unbeaten in their opening match of the Club World Cup, marking a strong start to the newly expanded competition for the continent. The Rio de Janeiro-based side were one of three to play against European opponents, each of those games ending in a draw. In the early days of the new-look competition, the teams have flipped the script on an underdog label that has been assigned to them, and they may just save the Club World Cup’s competitive legitimacy along the way.
The financial realities of soccer mean the sport is mostly viewed through a Europe-centric lens, especially so within the club game. That has not been a deterrent for South American sides like Fluminense, who have not exactly approached their matches like the weaker party they have sometimes been viewed as.
“I’m not just paying lip service to this whole thing. We play to win,” Gaucho said on Monday. “I trust them. I trust my team, I trust my people. If I didn’t trust them, I would just go for playing defense. Of course, we’ll be careful just like against any opponent but what I tell them to do is to be brave. Play with personality. … If I trust my team, why would we not be brave? Just play defense? Of course, we have respect for them but my team will not be shy and will play offense.”
Gaucho’s team lived up to the promise, with the manager offering further insight on his tactical approach and the practicality of it.
“There isn’t much to change or tweak,” he said. “We’ll have to do as well as we did today and just be calmer and more focused so that we can win. … We did not give them many opportunities and we did create opportunities for goals, so that’s how we protect ourselves.”
That spirit has been echoed by the other two South American teams to face European opposition — Palmeiras, who tied 0-0 with Porto on Sunday, and Boca Juniors, who drew 2-2 with Benfica on Monday. Boca outshot Benfica 10-8, even if the quality of the opponent’s shots were better, while Palmeiras outdid Porto with 17 shots to the opposition’s 11 and posted 2.08’s expected goals to Porto’s 0.78. Their success has not been a shock to everyone, though.
“We expected them to have a lot of ball possession, trying to bring a lot of wingers into the game,” Dortmund manager Niko Kovac said post-match. “Me, as a former player and as a coach, I’m not surprised because I know the Brazilian football very well and I know that they have a lot of quality.”
The success of South American teams is a fitting trend for this particular tournament. While Europeans feel “skeptical,” as Kovac described it on Monday, about the expanded Club World Cup, South Americans have embraced it wholeheartedly. The incentives are obvious in some ways — each team receives over $15 million simply for participating and can collect upwards of $100 million if they win the whole thing. As Gaucho noted on Monday, there’s an opportunity for players in South America to make a name for themselves and score lucrative deals to join teams in Europe, since the continent has always been rich with talent.
There is also the simple matter of playing for pride. South American teams have clearly come to the U.S. to make a point about their bonafides in a game that feels equally as native to their countries as it does Europe’s. It is a similar pride that explains the fact that legions of fans have chosen to follow them across the country during the Club World Cup, taking over New York’s Times Square and Miami-area Walmarts with equal fervor as they do the actual stadiums hosting the matches. They are responsible for creating incredible atmospheres, no matter if the game is closer to a sellout like Boca Juniors’ draw against Benfica at Miami Gardens’ Hard Rock Stadium or less than half-full, as it was at MetLife Stadium on Tuesday.
The Fluminense supporters who made up the bulk of the 34,000 in attendance almost made up the difference of the roughly 50,000 empty seats, if one looked away from the stands and let the sounds of their chants and cheers paint most of the picture in terms of the crowd’s size. Their drums could still be heard from the press conference tent as Gaucho and Jhon Arias, the player of the match, settled in for their post-match reflections. It is the type of off-field story that defines the big tournament experience and in the absence of the swaths of fans that usually represent Europe’s top clubs, it offers a stark reminder that the game does not belong only to the so-called elites.
Time will tell if the South American teams can keep their unbeaten streak going. It does not feel like a stretch to say that some of the continent’s best can go toe-to-toe against the second and third best teams in Portugal and the fourth-best team in Germany, but bigger tests await. Flamengo have Chelsea next and Botafogo play Champions League winners Paris Saint-Germain in the second set of group stage games, while Botafogo’s group stage finale is against Atletico Madrid, and River Plate wrap up this phase against Champions League finalists Inter. Even before their successful first batch of matches, many of these teams were expected to advance to the next round anyway.
How far they can collectively go is a big question, but not a new one. In fact, the Club World Cup marks a new chapter in one of the game’s oldest tales.
“It is always a battle,” Kovac recognized, “European football and South American football.”
Add Comment