Diniz hails Corinthians progress after Remo rout, backs continuity | OneFootball

Corinthians returned to play at Neo Química Arena after nearly two months and reunited with the Faithful Fans with a convincing performance. On the night of last Thursday (23), Timão beat Remo 3-0 in the 19th round of the Brazilian Championship, reached 27 points, and moved into seventh place in the table.

After the match, head coach Fernando Diniz gave a press conference and spoke about the team’s performance, the effects of the mid-season break, the squad’s tactical evolution, the difference between the two halves, and the board’s plans for the transfer window.

Photo: Rodrigo Coca / Corinthians Agency

Asked how much the break for the World Cup influenced Corinthians’ performance, Fernando Diniz stressed that the team’s display cannot be attributed only to the days of training.

“There’s no magic with 25 days for anyone. These criticisms that, eventually, you’re going to make of someone who lost the game, they’re very unfounded. You might say: ‘Oh, it’s criticism that is fair for the fans,’ but for those of you who are in football, you shouldn’t do that. So, usually, whoever lost one or two games… what did they do? One month and 25 days.

There isn’t much you can do. The players rested for a month, as I said, then you come back, you have to recover, the player has to train and also has to rest, you can’t train nonstop. So, we used the first days, the first training sessions, in two periods for a good part of them, and after those 10 days we had to give them a break, otherwise you wear the players out by doing the mid-season preparation.

Corinthians has been adding, since my arrival, what we have worked on from the beginning. If it were only these 25 days, we would never have had the first half we had. It would be impossible. There’s a lot of tactical grounding to play that way, things get consolidated over time.”

Diniz also commented on Corinthians’ attacking approach, with the team going forward with many players for much of the first half, and explained that this behavior had already been developed before the break.

“We had already been training these situations before the break. I would like to talk about this period that, sometimes, the media talks about in a way like: ‘The team trained for 25 days to play.’ As if 25 days were enough for you to do a lot of things. That has nothing to do with it. Nothing at all.

I think my real preseason may actually have been the moment I arrived, with all those games packed together, and we managed to keep training along the way and making specific corrections. If we look at it now, we practically went 60 days without a match. We were practically stopped for a month and then trained for a little over 20 days before the restart.

The players came back, so we had to do lab tests and physical exams. We spent three days on that. After that, we had to restore their best physical shape and technical sharpness. And we only started working on the tactical part last week. We had four or five very specific tactical training sessions.

And you don’t perform miracles with all those days. I think we managed to return in this condition for a few reasons. We had already trained situations like this. If you look at the game against Peñarol here, we had a first half very similar to today’s. We also finished playing very well against Grêmio, attacking with a lot of players. Especially after we conceded there, the second half was very good, building very well from the back and getting a lot of players forward.

So, it’s a combination of what we trained, what we played in that first stretch when I arrived, the way the players looked after themselves during the break, because everyone came back in reasonably good condition, and this additional phase of preparation.”

Despite the three-goal win, the coach assessed that Corinthians dropped the pace in the final stretch and said the intention was to maintain the intensity shown before halftime.

“I don’t think we had tactical control in the second half. We dropped in intensity in every sense. In terms of marking, obviously the team defended very well. We practically gave up no scoring chances.

But it wasn’t planned control. If we can’t play, then we’ll have to defend well, as we did. But that wasn’t the plan. It was predictable, in a way, that the pace would drop, but that wasn’t what we wanted to happen in the second half.

I would have liked the team to keep going, at least for a while longer, with higher intensity. But it was the first game. Obviously, after a first half like that and with the score at 3-0, there’s a certain level of comfort because of the result. There’s also the physical wear and tear, because it was the first game after practically two months. If you look at the overall sum of the two halves, it was a very good game.”

Finally, Fernando Diniz commented on Corinthians’ planning for the transfer window and said there is an understanding between the coaching staff and the board about the club’s financial needs.

“I think we’re very much aligned. I know Corinthians needs to sell someone, maybe one player, and it has to be a player who brings in a significant amount of money to make it worthwhile. So, I’ve always known that. If we could keep everyone, that would be great for me, but I don’t know to what extent Corinthians will be able to do that. And, if someone has to leave, let it be only one. And, if we can make a signing here and there, the board is also making an effort to do that.”

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