Falcão 1 - 2 Tomta (393780085)

793 punters turned up at Arena Jurai, and despite threatening clouds on the horizon, no rain came. Aldopaolo Marchini was the appointed referee with assistance provided by Emil Oving and Antonio Solano. Falcão started off with a 4-2-3 lineup. The following players had been chosen: Ojier - Proença, Barbosa, Badaró, Capoeira - de Jesus, Vlãdescu - Galinho, Figuière, Feitor.

A 4-4-2 alignment was the formation of choice for Tomta. The following players took the field: Zeković - de Alencar, Abrantes, Oliver, Manfré - Altamirano, Diniz, La Piana, Cunha Bueno - da Silva Sá, Fattahi.

For their match strategy, Falcão had decided to use their ability to counter-attack whenever possible. The wings were the focus of most of Tomta's attacks today. Tomta's J. Cunha Bueno could have put the guests one up after 1 minutes after chasing a through ball from the right, but F. Ojier was as fast as a snake, grabbing the ball from under his nose. The home crowd was not impressed by the fancy moves of Tomta's A. Altamirano after 3 minutes. He converted a pass from the left for a goal, resulting in the visitors taking the 0 - 1 lead. After 28 minutes, there was a bit of a mixup on the field as Falcão found themselves out of position and their organisation level dropped to inadequate. With 36 minutes played, M. da Silva Sá of Tomta fell dramatically just outside the penalty area. However, the referee was unimpressed, and booked him for diving. 0 - 1 was the score after the first half. Possession in the forty-five minutes was dominated by Tomta, with 55 percent of the ball.

A review of the gameplan helped Falcão get back to a solid organisation when the referee blew his whistle again. In a rapid move 60 minutes into the match, A. Altamirano of Tomta lost his man and passed the ball to the unmarked F. Fattahi who easily hit it home to make it 0 - 2. Luckily the ref didn't see him taunting the opposing fans in celebration - naughty boy! After this, you could see that the players of Tomta were more interested in killing time than scoring more goals. Tomta's J. Cunha Bueno was shown a yellow card after 66 minutes for slicing down an opponent. Due to a severely mistimed tackle, L. Barbosa of Falcão spent some time on the grass writhing in agony before he could get up and continue the game. 69 minutes into the game, Falcão seemed to suffer a certain amount of confusion and they fell to a inadequate level of organisation. The coach of Tomta was happy with the game so far, but still wanted to change the line up. After 70 minutes, C. Atouguia came on for M. da Silva Sá. A. de Alencar wanted to play on, but the Tomta coach had other ideas, and he was replaced 75 minutes into the game by I. van Zijverden. J. Cunha Bueno was the new captain of Tomta - handed the armband by the departing player. The home crowd was given a certain amount of consolation when R. Figuière scored after a brilliant midfield combination through the centre, reducing the lead to 1 - 2. The opposing supporters gave the referee an earful when he only gave O. Galinho from Falcão a yellow card after a mistimed challenge from behind 88 minutes into the game. That was far too lenient! Tomta claimed to have seen most of the ball, and the statistics agreed with them - possession being 52 percent.

Falcão's best player was L. Barbosa. A. Vlãdescu was a disappointment, however. F. Fattahi performed admirably for Tomta. On the other hand, V. Zeković's play was disheartening. The match ends 1 - 2.