The repercussion of Botafogo’s 1-0 win over Paris Saint-Germain on Thursday night gives a good measure of the surprise she caused. The first triumph of a South American club about a European in an official game since 2012 has been painted in epic paints in Brazil and seen as a shock on the old continent.
For the team, the Parisian formation “fell from the pedestal”. The traditional French sports newspaper pointed out that she was coming in a sequence of routs – a 5-0 of Inter Milan in the Champions League final – and had not conceded a goal for 366 minutes. Throughout the 2024/25 season, he had spent only three games without swinging the net against Bayern, Liverpool and Arsenal.
“Botafogo was the best defense we faced throughout the season, both in our league and Champions League. They were highly efficient, very compact, and always with the threat of taking us on the counterattack. We did not create the number of chances we are used to, and I congratulate them on it,” said coach Luis Enrique.
“We played soccer in Brazil!”, He shouted, still in the field, John Texor, owner of the Rio team. It was a provocation to Nasser Al-Khelaïfi, PSG’s powerful president, a club controlled by Qatar’s royal family. In the geography of modern football, it did not cause great strangeness for a American to make a joke of a Qatarian with a “here is Brazil” cry.
The question now is whether the alvinegro triumph was simply an exceptional result – it was done by the fact that the worn -out opponent was cast without five of its usual holders – or actually represents a different reality from expected to the first edition of the World Cup in its new format, named Club World Cup.
The first week of the competition seems to have reinforced the thesis that Brazilians’ distance to Europeans is not as large as imagined. Prior to Botafogo’s victory over Champions League champion Palmeiras and Fluminense were clearly higher than their rivals, respectively, in the draws with Porto and Borussia Dortmund.
This Friday (20), it was the turn of Flamengo to punish Chelsea. The formula was different from the defensive adopted by Botafogo. The red-black team sought the attack for much of the clash and established its superiority to build a 3-1 turn, called by the Spanish newspaper brand “another lesson from Brazilian football to the European”.
The teams of Brazil (Botafogo, Fluminense, Flamengo and Palmeiras) have so far accumulate seven games in the United States, with five wins and two draws, nine goals scored and two conceded. In clashes with Europeans, they are two triumphs and two draws, with four goals scored and one conceded.
These are numbers that are surprised to be taken into account that the clubs in the country had been suffering at the World Cup since the winning of Corinthians in 2012.
In the previous version of the competition, in which the representative of South America was already entering the semifinals, it became recurring the elimination of the Brazilian team in the first match, as occurred with Internacional (2010), Atlético Mineiro (2013), Palmeiras (2020), Flamengo (2022) and Botafogo (2024). The last four who advanced to the decision, always against a European, lost: Grêmio (2017), Flamengo (2019), Palmeiras (2021) and Fluminense (2023).
In the new Club World Cup, Brazil is the only country with four representatives, the result of its domain in South America. The six most recent editions of the Copa Libertadores ended with a Brazilian champion, and four of them had exclusively Brazilian endings – in the latest decision, Botafogo surpassed Atlético Mineiro.
There is evident economic advantage of the country’s associations in relation to their continental competitors. The lucrative TV agreements and the money that gushes from sports betting sites – which sponsor the 20 teams of the Brazilian Championship – established an even greater distance for rivals, even the most traditional in Argentina.
The Argentine team is the current world champion, while the Brazilian is experiencing an extended technical and identity crisis, but at the level of clubs the logic is reversed. Last year was records, with revenues that exceeded R $ 1 billion for Flamengo (R $ 1.334 billion), Palmeiras (R $ 1.274 billion) and Corinthians (R $ 1.115 billion).
This flow of money made the respected English magazine The Economist refer to Brazilian football as “The Next Premier League”. Perhaps it is exaggeration, but the performance seen in the Club Cup – with all the caveats, one of them the tournament at a time when Europeans are usually on vacation – suggests that the distance may not be the size you imagined.
