Flamengo Triumphs Over Fluminense: Fernando Diniz Analyzes Tricolor’s Performance & Absence of Marcelo in Copa do Brasil Elimination

O Fluminense was overcome by Flamengo on Thursday night, at Maracanã, with goals from Arrascaeta and Gabigol, and is eliminated from the Copa do Brasil. After the match, Fernando Diniz analyzed Tricolor’s performance and spoke about Marcelo’s absence.

– We’re not going to do any witch hunts. Do you think the team played badly against Corinthians? I thought the team played well, the team had several chances face to face, we lost a little organization but we played well. Today we didn’t play badly, we were very dominant in possession, but we didn’t have quality in goal. I don’t see that we had five bad matches. We were much worse against Cuiabá than today and we beat them – he analyzed.

– He wasn’t feeling fit to play. We took care of him during that time, he tried to go to play against Corinthians before, he wasn’t well yet. In the week before the Fla-Flu, he still wasn’t well either so we decided together not to include him in the game, because if he has an injury, the time away would be much longer.

Two of the options that came out of the Fluminense during the game were Arthur and Isaac, young people raised in the club’s youth categories. Fernando Diniz made an assessment on top of these substitutions in relation to the short cast of Tricolor.

– I think that base players are producing in training and, as it is, I see that they can contribute. The cast is not that short. We hired Jorge and he got injured, there was Vitor Mendes (removed for being involved in a bookmaker controversy), that’s two… And Marcelo. The blanket gets shorter. I really don’t like long casts, but we didn’t have Alexsander either. We prepared Marcelo for today and he couldn’t play, if you count Jorge and Felipe Melo that’s six more. We are trying, but it is difficult to hire, we have to respect the payroll limit. We were leaner than we should have been, but it brought together all the things in the world in the same circumstance that it was today. But the process of maturation of base players is like this.

More statements by Fernando Diniz

Performance against Flamengo
– We ended up having to expose ourselves at the end of the game and Flamengo took advantage. But the Fluminense played a good game. They scored once again with a dead ball, which had been a strong point of ours. We had a lot of corners and we couldn’t take advantage of them. We lost organization at the end with the eagerness and we couldn’t take advantage of it.

Reinforcements
– We have to go with criteria to know how to hire. O Fluminense I do not have money. To pay the payroll is complicated, the president has to manage to get the money to honor the commitments, so we have to have criteria to hire accurately.

Fluminense from heaven to hell?
– My answer will be the same as when we beat Carioca. A lot of people think it’s going from heaven to hell. I’m not in heaven and I’m not in hell either. The team reacted and started to play well. It was a game with a very difficult opponent. I want to see in the future who will have a domain of possession like we had. The result often escapes our hands, there are things that cannot be explained. Players know we need to improve, they know we need to look at our performance and keep improving. It’s common sense, we’re still the same, it’s not heaven or hell. There is no hell with me.

Improvement
– People have embezzlements. We don’t want the team to fall out of production, but that ends up happening. The good teams are the ones that increase in productivity, and I think we did that. Until the 30th minute it was a game of few chances, and we scared the dead ball. We have to train, improve the team and be able to repeat the performance we had against Corinthians in the first half, there is no ready recipe. We want the team to score a lot of goals but it’s not always possible for that to happen.

Game against RB Bragantino
– We will try to do our best. It has no recipe. We’re going to train to create opportunities, have circulation… The first thing to score a goal is to create opportunities. We will do everything to make them happen.

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– The team always has the obligation to fight. The team was eliminated and now it’s time to do as much as we can to continue the season.

Departures from Biel, Michel Araújo, Calegari and Caio Paulista
– Caio Paulista was a guy hostile to everyone, Michel Araújo and Calegari in the same way… Fluminense provided this. They didn’t leave because of it. The team has Alexsander, Marcelo and we went after Jorge for the role, which unfortunately got hurt. I liked all these players, Caio played great games on the wing. Gabriel Teixeira’s option to leave was his, revenue for the club came in. The environment is part of that, we couldn’t play badly because it was all Caio’s fault at a certain point, regardless of whether he played well or not.

With the fall in the Copa do Brasil, the Fluminense he is still alive in the Libertadores Cup, where he is the leader of Group D with three wins in four games, and in the Brazilian Championship, a tournament that currently occupies the 8th position with 13 points.

The team returns to the lawns next Sunday to face RB Bragantino, again in Maracanã, at 4 pm, for the 9th round of the Brasileirão.

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