Football / Soccer / Calcio / Futebol / Fußball

It’s almost here, and you don’t want to miss it. I’m so fucking hyped for this match that, in a surge of benevolence, I decided to light the way for some of the most clueless European football fans, who are allergic to anything happening across the Atlantic, on why this is one of the most exciting Libertadores clashes in recent history.

PART ONE: FLUMINENSE

A cherry waiting to be popped

Fluminense, founded in 1902, is probably the most traditional Brazilian club without a Libertadores title. They got close once, in 2008, when the Maracanã saw a hat-trick by Thiago Neves helping them come back from a 4-2 defeat in the first leg to Ecuadorian side LDU. But a legendary José Francisco Cevallos blocked 3 of 4 penalty shots by the home team and gave Ecuador its first Libertadores.

Maracanazo 2: Electric Boogaloo

The past two decades were not that bad for Fluminense: 2 domestic titles, 1 Brazilian cup, and a bunch of state championships (where they play their local Rio de Janeiro rivals). But Flu’s latest Libertadores participations form a collection of frustrations and underwhelming performances, with the exception of said 2008 run. They never even managed to reach the semi-finals again, with knock-out losses to arguably much weaker sides, such as the Paraguayans Libertad (2011) and Olimpia (twice, in 2013 and 2022) and Ecuadorian Barcelona de Guayaquil in 2021.

An improbable hero

But in 2022, Fluminense announced Fernando Diniz, a retired midfielder turned journeyman manager, as their head coach. It was Diniz's second spell on the club, after a disastrous domestic run in 2019, when Flu ended the year uncomfortably close to the relegation zone.

The hot-tempered Diniz has somewhat of a wide lore, especially because of his football philosophy, half-smilingly nicknamed by the internet as dinizismo. His insistence on building play from the back has been a trademark of his teams since the lowest of levels. And in South America, particularly in Brazil, we’re simply not used to watching a team passing so close to its own goal line. But here is Diniz, adamant in his hatred of hoofing the ball up the pitch, trying to make it work in every single club he coaches.

Most sane Diniz expression

He is also interested in constantly overloading one small area of the pitch with many players, creating fast-paced one-twos to get out of a high press and break the lines, creating funny-looking formations that seem odd to the eye used to European positional play, where players are effectively covering all sectors of the pitch.

The Brazilian teams who enjoyed the most glory in this decade simply do not play this way. While you could say Jorge Jesus’ Flamengo played with offensive flair, it was also very positional and direct. And, more recently, the Libertadores and two-time Brazilian champions Palmeiras, under Abel Ferreira, is generally very reactive, preferring to sit lower and play long balls to the wings.

Diniz’s tactical soul twin could be an Argentinian. Marcelo Gallardo’s victorious River Plate was also horizontally compact, very fond of keeping the ball, and relied on individual talent to provide line breaks. Both managers like unpredictability, early breaks, and efficient connections between individual players which can generate progression, more chaos, and more connections up the pitch.

Screengrab from the FootballMeta channel on YT. Overloadin'.

But Diniz did not enjoy the same success as his Argentinian counterpart. Instead, his teams became famous for their defensive blunders and useless ball retention plus an unproductive offense. But when it worked, it was pretty cool to watch, and the sports press still regarded Diniz as an innovator, sometimes a visionary, to the amusement of the medium football fan. He became known as someone who “falls upwards”. So what he doesn’t have a single trophy as a manager? No matter how bad his last work was, you could be sure a top team would buy into his wonderful promises of a beautiful, attacking football. Like Fluminense did in April of 2022.

The change of the tricolor tide

Then it all began to click. Under Diniz, Fluminense finished in a very respectable 3rd place in the 2022 Serie A, and as the second-best attack, with 63 goals. 26 of those came from Germán Cano, an explosive and lethal Argentinian striker. He scored 44 goals that year and broke a 1972 record for most goals scored by a foreigner in the Brazilian league.

In 2023, Diniz’s Fluminense kept firing on all cylinders. Cano scored twice in the finals of the Rio de Janeiro state championship against Flamengo, in the centennial derby known as Fla-Flu. This modest state championship was Fernando Diniz’s first title as a coach.

David Luiz watches as Germán Cano does a celebratory dance.

The squad changed and rearranged in preparation for the Serie A and Libertadores. Promising academy products such as the dynamic midfielder André, centre-back Nino and winger John Kennedy, alternated in the starting eleven with battle-hardened veterans like legendary left-back Marcelo (a diehard Fluminense supporter), controversial Felipe Melo, 43-year-old goalkeeper Fábio and Neymar’s old sidekick Paulo Henrique Ganso. Another key piece of this squad is the pacy Colombian Jhon Arias, signed in 2021, who is always a menace on the right wing.

Following a very positive start on the Libertadores group stage, with a 5-1 home victory over none less than the continental titans River Plate, the world suddenly realized that the dinizismo could really be an effective system. The word relationism began to pop up on YouTube, and sofa experts regarded Diniz as the most-needed antidote for the rigid European positional play. Fluminense’s match highlights were being analyzed as if they represented the birth (or rebirth) of a fresh outlook on the game. Joga bonito apparently was brought back from the grave, and Fernando Diniz was its necromancer. The ultimate crowning came in July. Diniz was, then, appointed as the new Brazilian NT manager, while keeping his job at Fluminense.

Oscillating and fighting old ghosts

Despite the high praise for their explosive start, Fluminense’s game went quite mild. After a couple of underwhelming wins against weaker sides and a couple of defeats, including a very bad outing in Argentina which ended 2-0 for River Plate, Flu ended the Libertadores group stage as only the 8th-best team in the tournament.

The thing is, in Libertadores, you don’t want to play too pretty. With some exceptions here and there, it’s usually the scrappy, supernaturally lucky teams that stumble their way to the trophy and eternal glory. It’s a tournament where being dominant doesn’t always mean you will ultimately win, if that makes any sense. And Fluminense seemed to connect with a newfound, copero y peleador side of themselves, whilst also tapping into the creative sparks that characterize their play. Two slim victories against Argentinos Juniors in the round of 16 were followed by a 5-1 aggregate against their old Paraguayan foes of Olimpia. Smooth sailing, and the second Libertadores semi-finals in their history.

Squad stats for Libertadores. Cano has 12 goals in 11 starts. John Kennedy also a highlight.

Their hardest test was yet to come: a Brazilian clash with Internacional, a club that is definitely more used to playing in the advanced stages of Libertadores. And up until the 80th minute of the second leg, it did seem Fluminense was destined to bottle their most promising year in continental football: Inter led 1-0, 2-1 on the aggregate, in a match where Fluminense was up more than 70% in possession. The dinizismo jokes were apparently back on the menu. But then Cano got a line break and passed to the youngster John Kennedy, who chipped over Inter’s goalkeeper with the cold blood of a veteran. And 6 minutes later, Cano himself scored the winner with a powerful finish inside the box. Fluminense seemed to defy all the tropes and the cliches and was, once again, in a Libertadores final...

Cool-looking fellas wanting to make history.

But OH BOY they have a tough nut to crack.

Next up in a day or two, PART TWO: THE DREAM-KILLERS WHO DRESS BLUE AND GOLD.

If you endured my stupid prose to the end, congrats and hope you liked it!

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