Corinthians – Club 4 – Season 2 – Update 5
Welcome back to my Pentagon Challenge as we approach the half way stage of my first full season in Brazil as manager of Corinthians. During this update we have a mixture of league, cup and continental action in a big month in our season.
Results
As mentioned, this is a big month for us in the context of our season and we kicked off with an away win over Vasco da Gama in an entertaining 4-2 victory. Matheusao was handed a rare start up front and repaid the faith shown in him with 2 goals in the opening 9 minutes. Mosquera and Cantu further extended our advantage before the break before Gama mounted a late comeback with little success.
We returned to cup action in midweek at home to Mineiro and with a heavily rotated team could only muster a 0-0 draw ahead of the second leg in a weeks time. In between the two legs, we faced Gremio, who we knocked out in the previous round and we demolished them 4-0 in front of our home fans to extend our lead at the top of the table.
We then headed into the second leg of the Copa do Brasil quarter finals as we travelled to Mineiro. We started with a frantic first 6 minutes in which we found the net inside 3 minutes, before conceding a penalty (subsequently missed) and then doubling our lead just a minute later. Things looked even more comfortable for us as Mosquera made it 3-0 after 35 minutes, but Mineiro were not in the mood to lose in front of the own fans and mounted a shocking second half comeback, culminating with a 92nd minute winner that meant we missed out on progressing on away goals. A bitterly disappointing defeat given the lead that we had held, but in all honesty, the cup was never a key focus for us this season.
Following our embarrassing cup exit we returned to league action with a convincing 4-0 win over Cruzeiro before we travelled to Chile to face Colo-Colo in the first leg of our Copa Sudamerica 3rd round. It was a close match overall, but we managed to come away with a crucial away goal in a narrow 1-0 win.
Ahead of the second leg we face Fluminense in the league and recorded an amazing 3-0 victory, despite left back Ochoa seeing red for 2 yellow cards in the first 13 minutes. Goals from Mosquera (2) and Renato securing a well deserved victory for our 10 man team.
In the final game of this update we welcome Colo-Colo back to Brazil as we look to capitalise on our 1-0 first leg victory. We started on the attack and Barcia scored a rare goal to make it 2-0 on aggregate after 18 minutes. We continued our good start with a 3 minute salvo as Mosquera and Sandrinho both found the back of the net. Colo-Colo did score a late consolation goal, but we progressed 4-1 over the two legs to progress to the next round.
The quarter finals were drawn after the game and we will face fellow Brazilians Fluminense in a few weeks time. We can take some confidence into the tie after we just beat them 3-0 with 10 men for the majority of the game.
A decent run of form overall, particularly in the league with another 4 straight wins, just a little disappointing to go out of the cup when we were 3-0 up.
Table
Our good league form has seen us move 9 points clear at the top, although Flamengo have 2 games in hand so can close the gap to 3 points. We are almost at the half way point of the league season now, so to only have not won 2 games is pretty impressive.
Squad performance
The squad has continued to perform to ridiculous levels with the number of goals we are scoring. Mosquera (35) has moved ahead of Renato (32) in the race to be top goal scorer this season. Assists wise, Barcia now has 25 assists, something I don’t know if I have ever seen before on Football Manager. 18 of those are in the league which means he has 3 times more than any other player this season. The left back position has also been a massive provider of goals with Ochoa (17) and Kailky (13) racking up the assists.
Summary
A decent run of results again with another 100% win record in the league, which we are domination this season. We have also secured progression to the next stage of the Copa Sudamerica and based on the teams left in the competition I feel that we have a decent chance at bringing home the trophy.
*Thanks for reading an apologies that my uploads have been a bit erratic recently. For those who live in the UK you will know that recently sitting in front of a computer screen sweating and playing FM has probably been the last place anyone would want to be!*