Provocative São Paulo post sparks LDU-Uruguayan tension | OneFootball

Shortly after eliminating São Paulo from the Copa Libertadores with a victory at Morumbi last Thursday (25), LDU decided to use social media for a taunt. The Ecuadorian club posted a photo of the pitch, with the empty stadium in the background, and the caption: "Definitivamente, el Morumbi, si, te mata" (freely translated: "Definitely, Morumbi kills you, yes").

The target was clear: the defeated rival. But who expressed indignation was Nacional from Montevideo.

In a note, the Uruguayan club wrote: "Messages of this level touch on a very painful subject, both for our institution, for São Paulo, South American football, and the world. They attack the joint work that all clubs carry out for the eradication of violence in our sport."

The reason lies in the death of defender Juan Izquierdo, which occurred last year, days after feeling unwell during a match at Morumbi against Tricolor, also for Libertadores.

LDU deleted the post, but the controversy was already in place. And then, some considerations are in order.

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The Uruguayan reaction, understandable in the painful context, seemed exaggerated. The Ecuadorians' post was a direct response to a catchphrase of football itself: "El Morumbi te mata", a phrase repeated by São Paulo fans before home games for Libertadores.

The curious thing is that the club itself never adopted this catchphrase as a brand. It only resorted to it twice, both in 2016, the last one after a victory against River Plate in Libertadores.

And the greater irony is that the phrase has a distorted origin. It arose in 2005, in a River Plate fans forum, before the semifinal against São Paulo. The author wrote: "No sé si defiende mejor, pero en el Morumbi te mata" (freely translated: "I don't know if it defends better, but at Morumbi it kills you"). The idea was that São Paulo decided the home games by "killing" the opponent, not that the stadium itself was "deadly", even metaphorically.

The forum has been offline for a long time, which contributed to the phrase crystallizing in a different abbreviated version from the original, and today, almost everyone repeats it without having any idea what the author meant, even though the real meaning is not so far from the popularized one. It was this version, loaded with symbolism, that LDU used.

São Paulo, for its part, preferred silence. And there really wasn't much room for indignation: in recent years, the club has used its own networks to poke at opponents when it wins.

The point is simple: if São Paulo likes to provoke when it wins, it needs to withstand when it loses. And it wouldn't make sense to react only now, as if the catchphrase was acceptable until the elimination for LDU. After all, in the previous weeks, it was the Tricolor fans themselves who resorted to "El Morumbi te mata" as an argument of faith in the turnaround at home, even after the defeat in Ecuador.

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