At it again! Rafael rattled Contreras before miss that saved São Paulo | 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 get into his opponent’s head before the kick. And it worked.

“It was also a bit of a mind game there, I told him he was going to shoot down the middle, and I kept talking to him the whole time, trying to break his concentration, because I knew it was very important for us not to concede the goal, and luckily he missed,” said the No. 23 shirt 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 Libertadores match when he also distracted a Colombian opponent, who missed his spot 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 Chilean side would reach ten with a win today.

“Of course we really regret it, we leave the field upset, because we would have liked to have already secured our qualification. We know that with a positive result, the three points, we would have guaranteed qualification. But football is like that, he ended up hitting the ball, it took a deflection and went in,” Rafael said.

“But we are fully capable of still qualifying, and also still chasing first place in the competition. And we’re going to work for that, at home, with our fans, and we have everything we need to secure qualification, even though we really wanted to have done that today,” concluded the Tricolor player.

With the draw, São Paulo have now gone 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, once again at home.

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