Copa do Brasil 2010: the Santos side that made Brazil dream | OneFootball

Gabriel Pierin, from the Memory Center

It was a Santos side that always looked to attack. It had technique, talent, speed, and an impressive number of players capable of deciding a match. Neymar, Ganso, Robinho, André, and company formed a team that revived a deeply Santos tradition: turning football into a spectacle.

In the 2010 Copa do Brasil, the team managed by Dorival Júnior did exactly that in its own way. It scored in all 11 matches and finished the competition with 39 goals, an average of 3.54 per game. It also conceded 15, it is true, but that statistic says less about its weaknesses than it does about the kind of football it played. It was a team that believed in its ability to attack, that was never intimidated when it needed to chase a result, and that had both the individual and collective tools to change a match.

The campaign began on February 24, in Campo Grande, against Naviraiense. Santos did not play a great match, but won 1-0, with a goal from Marquinhos in the 36th minute of the second half. The result gave the team from Mato Grosso do Sul hope that it might be able to pull off a surprise at Vila Belmiro.

Before the return leg, the Naviraiense players went to the beach. Many of them had never seen the sea. They also visited the Memorial of Achievements and were impressed by Santos’s collection of trophies. But when they stepped onto the pitch, reality was very different. By the end of the first half, Santos was already leading 6-0. In the second half, it scored four more and built a 10-0 rout, one that recalled the huge scorelines from the days of Dorval, Mengálvio, Coutinho, Pelé, and Pepe. André scored three times. Neymar got the seventh after dribbling past the entire opposing defense, while Robinho completed the show with a chipped goal.

Remo, in Belém, was the next opponent. And there Santos earned its only truly convincing away win: 4-0, with two goals from Neymar and two from André. From that point on, the competition would demand even more from that group, which was already showing signs of having something essential for a title-winning campaign: the ability to respond to challenges.

In the round of 16, the first leg coincided with Santos’s 98th anniversary. On April 14, Vila Belmiro hosted Guarani and witnessed one of Neymar’s greatest individual performances. The 18-year-old, already being hailed as Brazil’s best player, scored five goals in the 8-1 thrashing.

With qualification practically secured, Dorival Júnior took a mixed lineup to Campinas. Guarani won 3-2, but Breitner and Alex Sandro scored for Santos, and the spot in the next round was safe.

From the quarterfinals onward, the Copa took on another dimension. At Mineirão, on April 28, Santos faced Vanderlei Luxemburgo’s Atlético Mineiro in front of 46,000 fans. Diego Tardelli put the home side 2-0 up, but Santos did not lose its shape. Robinho scored in the 44th minute of the first half and kept the team alive. Tardelli scored again seven minutes into the second half, but Edu Dracena pulled one back in the 37th minute to make it 3-2. It was exactly the kind of situation in which that Santos team looked strongest: when it had to respond.

A week later, on May 5, 14,245 fans packed Urbano Caldeira. At Vila, Santos took the initiative from the start. André and Neymar made it 2-0. Correa pulled one back at the end of the first half, but Wesley scored four minutes into the second and made it 3-1.

Santos was in the semifinal. And the opponent would be Grêmio. The first meeting, on May 12 at the Estádio Olímpico, drew around 40,000 people and seemed to be heading for a comfortable night for Santos. In just 20 minutes, André scored twice, and there was even time for the traditional little dances in the celebrations.

But Grêmio reacted in spectacular fashion. By the 30th minute of the second half, Santos was trailing 4-2. The excitement took over the stadium, and even the local Rio Grande do Sul commentators got caught up in it. One of them said that “Grêmio’s harpoon is stuck in the whale’s back”; another mocked Santos by saying it could dance “the elimination.”

But that Santos had Ganso. In the 37th minute, the midfielder found Robinho with a superb pass. The forward controlled it with his chest and fired into the net, cutting the defeat to 4-3. The result was still unfavorable, but the goal was hugely important for the second leg.

At Vila Belmiro, a week later, Santos again showed why it had become the biggest attraction in Brazilian football. In front of 13,896 fans, wearing an all-white kit that seemed to bring back the atmosphere of the greatest moments in its history, the team won 3-1, with stunning goals from Ganso, Robinho, and Wesley. Grêmio was eliminated.

The Santos fans took the chance to answer the taunts from the first match. If the opponent was the “Immortal,” as Grêmio is known, then at Vila, the Santos supporters said, immortals were buried alive.

The final against Vitória seemed, then, to be the last step in a campaign that had already produced great moments. In the first leg, at Vila, Santos dominated and won 2-0, with goals from Neymar and Marquinhos. It could have built a bigger advantage, but the result still left the tie open going into Salvador.

On Wednesday, August 4, around 35,000 fans packed Barradão. For Vitória, the most important title in its history was at stake. For Santos, there was the chance to win the Copa do Brasil for the first time and complete the set of national titles it had competed for. Dorival Júnior lined up Rafael, Pará, Edu Dracena, Durval, and Alex Sandro; Arouca, Wesley, and Ganso; Neymar, Robinho, and André.

The first half was highly contested and offered few chances. In the 44th minute, Edu Dracena rose to head the ball home. The goal triggered title-winning celebrations. And it was no exaggeration: with that result, Vitória would need to win 4-1 to stop Santos from lifting the trophy.

The team from Bahia came back determined to change the story of the final. It pressed, found spaces, and turned it around, making it 2-1 in the 32nd minute of the second half. Santos began to struggle to get out of its own half, while Vitória still searched for the goals it needed.

But the advantage built at Vila had been enough. When Carlos Eugênio Simon blew for full time, Santos were Copa do Brasil champions for the first time. And the title perfectly reflected the strength of that team. In 11 matches, there were 39 goals, an average of 3.54 per game. Neymar, at 18 years old, finished as the competition’s top scorer with 11 goals. Paulo Henrique Ganso, at 20, was chosen by the Brazilian Football Confederation as the best player of the tournament.

It was not just a team of great talents gathered in the same squad. There was an identity. Neymar was the game-breaker, Ganso was the thinker, Robinho added experience and quality, André was there to score goals, and other players stepped up at decisive moments. Wesley, Marquinhos, Edu Dracena, Alex Sandro, and many others also left their mark on that campaign.

It was precisely that combination that made that Santos side one of Brazil’s great teams of 2010. A team capable of winning 10-0, seeing an 18-year-old score five times, surviving a comeback at the Olímpico, responding against Atlético Mineiro, and deciding a semifinal through the goals of its main stars.

In that Copa do Brasil, Santos did not need to choose between playing beautifully and being competitive. It did both. It thrilled, it suffered, it reacted, and above all, it won. On the night of August 4, 2010, in Salvador, the football that had made Brazil dream won a trophy.

The trophy is at the Memorial of Achievements at Vila Belmiro, alongside so many other chapters in Santos’s history, waiting to tell once again the story of that generation that, for a few months, made it seem as though football could once again be a celebration.

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