Open your eyes, black and white team from Minas Gerais!

     Last Wednesday night (10) Atlético's victory brought me what only football brings, the emotion of a knockout match. Apart from the competition system which proves to be much more exciting than the points system used in our long Brazilian championship, let's remember that the game between Atlético Mineiro and Newell's Old Boys was a South American dispute, which brings an extra spice to the game. 

      Up to this point we've talked about the honest characteristics of a football game, but at a certain point we begin to enter the business world that permeates our beloved sport, or rather, the companies that manage it. Look, a referee making a mistake in a game, reversing a foul, or even potentially changing the course of a match by not awarding a penalty, is something that happens, it passes. But for this to happen in almost every game (or in the most decisive ones) and in games involving Brazilian teams becomes a very big coincidence. 

      Mistakes in games involving Corinthians (for example, the game against Boca Juniors), Fluminense, or Atlético, the only team that continued in this cup due to competence and mainly luck (of being a champion, it should be said), cannot go unnoticed. It is evident that there has been a maneuver by the governing body of the Copa Libertadores, CONMEBOL, which organizes these and other events, against Brazilian teams, seeking hegemony in decisive moments in recent years.

      In the last nine finals, we've always had Brazilian teams competing, winning five titles, and in twenty years we've been among the four finalists. This is what motivates this South American manager, who claims to represent teams and national teams from the region, to try to exclude Brazilians from this list. 

      And if we return to the first topic discussed in this text, Atlético Mineiro's arrival in the Libertadores final, we can see that it was fraught with problems, such as the annulment of a goal that, even though it was an invalid play (this is not part of the discussion; if it was proven invalid, then it's correct), is almost impossible to perceive with the naked eye, in addition to numerous uncalled penalties and very dubious plays.

     But we must remember that those who organize Brazilian football and should be there to defend us from this situation are the "great and honest" CBF, permeated by agreements that simply aim for profit and not the improvement of the sport, the manipulation of media regarding game times, match-fixing schemes, and bribery of referees. In short, if we were to try to list everything, this text would never end. Therefore, we see a dead end, because if the continental entity is negligent, the national one is even more so and corrupt. 

     I should add a correction: not only should Atlético Mineiro, the national representative in the Copa Libertadores final, open their eyes, but the entire Brazilian football community should open their eyes.