Hostages to inertia: keeping Zubeldía could bin Flu’s year | OneFootball

My tricolor friends, forgive this Fluminense fan for the outburst that follows. But, taking advantage of the space entrusted to me here at Saudações Tricolores, I intend to vent. Not the kind of venting that happens on the sidelines after a match, when anger and “gut reaction” speak louder. What I intend to do today is vent with reason. And my reason asks me a question that won’t go away: Why keep Zubeldia? What’s the point? What has he been doing — and for how long — that justifies keeping a coach who is driving the fans to a nervous breakdown?

Has he been doing a good job in the locker room? That’s not exactly what we hear between the lines of the reports out there, much less from the mouths of those who have even minimal access to the club’s inner workings.

So then he must be exceptional at transition play and making rational use of the youth academy? Not even close — he barely uses the academy; on the contrary, he overlooks the Xerém boys every single time they could have even the slightest chance to play.

Ah, then it must be because of the football shown on the pitch, which delights, convinces and, above all, wins? I wish. Flu is predictable, slow and stuck playing a damned 4-3-3, where the wingers act like full-back assistants, the two holding midfielders spend their time chasing plays, and the team simply produces nothing.

At the end of the day, there are no reasons that make any sense in the mind of the person writing this. It is incomprehensible that the board — whether general director Mário Bittencourt, executive director Paulo Angioni or president Mattheus Montenegro — would decide to pick this fight and take on such absurd friction with the stands just to keep an indefensible coach. And all this for what? For absolutely nothing.

He offers no solutions, shows no range, and is dragging the fans into a state of enormous revolt, fully intensified by this elimination against Vasco. Looking ahead, Fluminense’s short-term future is, at the very least, worrying. With the Libertadores matches just around the corner, the real fear is that we’ll be swept out of every knockout competition, leaving us only the Brazilian Championship to limp through with a sad, melancholy campaign of mere participation.

We need a leader with ambition, someone capable of awakening in the players the hunger to win and to be champions. And for that to happen, we need a board that also aspires to titles and has the courage to intervene at critical moments. The club’s leadership cannot be hostage to contracts, old paradigms or a stubborn internal guideline that says “we don’t fire coaches.” To hell with that.

The change has to be radical and immediate, right now, even before the opening whistle against Rivadávia. If this inertia continues, our year will be yet another one thrown away, reducing Fluminense to a mere supporting actor on the national stage and condemning us to witness some humiliations that already seem all but guaranteed just up ahead.

Tricolor regards

Ana

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