At it again! Rafael says he wound up Contreras before pen miss | OneFootball

If São Paulo’s 1-1 draw with Millonarios on Tuesday night (19) was bad, the result could have been even worse for Tricolor and put the team’s qualification at risk with the penalty awarded to the Colombians at the end of the match at Morumbi.

In the 40th minute of the second half, Dória brought down Alex Castro inside the box, giving the visiting team a chance to win. Contreras, however, took the penalty very poorly and blasted the ball wide (watch below). But goalkeeper Rafael revealed that, once again, he tried to shake his opponent psychologically before the kick. And it worked.

“It was also a bit of a mental game there, I told him he was going to shoot down the middle, I kept talking to him the whole time, trying to throw him off, because I knew it was very important for us not to concede the goal, and luckily he missed,” said the No. 23 in an interview with ESPN after the match.

“I hope we don’t have any more penalties now, but if we do, that we can save them, or that their striker misses, because that save in our minds, so to speak, that missed penalty put us back in the game,” added the goalkeeper.

Rafael has already managed to disrupt his rivals on penalties on other occasions, such as in a Copa Libertadores match when he also unsettled a Colombian opponent, who missed his kick.

The draw kept Tricolor at the top of Group C in the Sudamericana, with 9 points, but they can still be overtaken by O’Higgins, who play this Wednesday (20) against Boston River, who have zero points. With seven points, the Chileans would reach ten with a win today.

“Of course we regret it a lot, we leave the field upset, because we would have liked to have already confirmed our qualification. We know that with a positive result, the three points, we would have secured qualification. But football has these things, their shot ended up taking a deflection and going in,” Rafael said.

“But we still have every chance to qualify and also go after first place in the competition. And we’re going to work for that, at home, with our fans, and we have everything it takes to go after qualification, even though we really wanted to have secured it today,” concluded the São Paulo player.

With the draw, São Paulo made it seven straight matches without a win. On Saturday (23), at 5 p.m. (Brasília time), they will try to bounce back in the Brazilian Championship against Botafogo at Morumbi. Their fate in the Sudamericana will be decided next Tuesday (26), against Uruguay’s Boston River, again at home.

This article was translated into English by Artificial Intelligence. You can read the original version in 🇧🇷 here.