Adeus Vitor Pereira. Flamengo Sacks Portuguese Coach, Prompting A New Crisis

At what point did it all collapse for Flamengo and Vitor Pereira? Or had the Portuguese been doomed from the start, succeeding Dorival Junior who guided the Rio club to the league-and-cup double in 2022? His dismissal followed a procession of painful, but crucial defeats in which crosstown rival Fluminense was a protagonist.

On Sunday, at the Maracana, Fluminense destroyed Flamengo 4-1 to win the Carioca championship and become the first club to reverse a two-goal deficit from the first leg in the final. Above all, it was the manner and ethos of Fluminense’s victory that impressed. Flamengo was punished and outclassed in every department of the field. Marcelo demonstrated why he had excelled at Real Madrid for so many years, while German Cano could simply not stop scoring goals. The scoreline almost flattered Flamengo. Before half-time, the rubro-negro fans chanted ‘My Flamengo doesn’t need you’.

The taunt was unmistakably aimed at Pereira, a coach who never felt at home with Flamengo. The Fluminense defeat was simply one too many. Yet again, Flamengo failed to win silverware and in Brazil, coaches derive their legitimacy from victories and titles. Fernando Diniz, his Fluminense counterpart, is almost an exception. His ideas and philosophy have shaped him much more than his victories. His teams play possession-based soccer, often attacking in numbers. A 3-1-6 formation is not unheard of. He is shortlisted to become Brazil’s national team manager.

Flamengo however was catatonic, the consequence of a club in transition, seeking a new identity under a new coach, but whatever Pereira tried it never seemed to work – pushing up the full-backs, populating the midfield, playing two strikers. His team selection also questioned Gabriel Barbosa’s status as a starter. The good work of Dorival Junior was undone, but it had been folly to dismiss the Brazilian in the first place. Even more so with the Club World Cup on the horizon, a tournament that evokes disdain in Europe but is viewed as the holy grail in South America. It represents the moment Brazilian and Argentinean clubs can go toe-to-toe with their European counterparts, who hold all the economic power.

In South America, it’s Flamengo that enjoys a position of financial power, something that Diniz also emphasized after his club’s victory, yet the region’s most potent club fell at the first hurdle in the Club World Cup against Al Hilal of Saudi Arabia. It was an incomprehensible defeat to the Flamengo faithful who had long dreamed of a final with Real Madrid. Pereira seemed to excel at failing at the most crucial moments: defeat in the Brazilian and South American Super Cup. He also ceded the Taça Guanabara, a municipal trophy, to Fluminense. Whenever it mattered, Flamengo didn’t deliver.

It incensed the fanbase, accustomed to victory – the legacy of the era of Jorge Jesus, the Portuguese who transformed Flamengo into a continental power again. He succeeded in fielding all of Gabriel Barbosa, Bruno Henrique, Everton Ribeiro and Giorgian De Arrascaeta together, making Flamengo unstoppable. His successors failed to emulate him, rendering Flamengo a purgatory: one coach after another had to contend with the burden of expectation without the backing of the club’s board to deliver work in the medium to long term. On average, since Jesus, Flamengo has had two coaches per season.

And so now, it’s back to the drawing board for Flamengo. Jesus is once more the leading candidate, closely followed by Argentina’s Jorge Sampaoli. His 2019 arrival and success prompted an influx of foreign coaches in the Brazilian game, but the appointment was ultimately simply a stroke of luck for Flamengo and not the result of a larger vision. With the club in crisis, can Jesus prove to be the messiah once again?