Dinenno scores as São Paulo beat Botafogo at Morumbi | OneFootball

Argentinian celebrates his first goal for Tricolor (Alexandre Schneider/Getty Images)

RAFAEL EMILIANO@rafaelemilianoo

Recommended by former coach Luis Zubeldía, who was fired, Juan Dinenno was living a real nightmare in his routine at Morumbi. Without scoring goals for more than a year, disregarded by current coach Hernán Crespo and seeing São Paulo openly talking about going to the market to hire a new striker, the Argentine was dealing with rejection without even having had the opportunity to present a sequence worthy of evaluation.

Well, things started to change on Sunday night (14), with number 19 being the author of the winning goal in São Paulo's 1-0 victory over Botafogo, at Morumbi, for the 23rd round of the Brazilian Championship.

The goal came at the 6th minute of the game, when Dinenno took advantage of a perfect cross from the left by Enzo Díaz and, showing great opportunism, pushed the ball into the net to score the only goal of the game.

The striker's move, who took good advantage of the opportunity received amid Crespo's absences to set up the offensive sector, was the crowning of an absolute dominance by Tricolor in the first half. The team, even without constructive effort, managed to appear regularly in the opponent's area, relying, above all, on the weakness of the rival.

Making many mistakes, the cariocas spent a good part of the initial 45 minutes being harmless and giving the necessary spaces for São Paulo to play without major problems.

A dangerous move, however, only happened at 31, when Enzo Díaz, one of the main São Paulo figures of this initial stage, hit the post in a free-kick.

After the break, the scenario changed. Botafogo made changes, managed to balance the actions and appeared with more quality and regularity.

On the other hand, however, São Paulo kept the high pace and continued its offensive rotation. At 4, in fact, they even scored, with Tapia, but the referee disallowed claiming offside.

After a sincere exchange of opportunities, with good chances for both sides, Rigoni, one of the debutants of the day, had the chance to seal the deal at 44, when he started a counter-attack, invaded the area free of marking and shot at the exit of the goalkeeper, hitting the post unbelievably.

The victory keeps São Paulo in a frank fight to enter the qualification zone for the next Copa Libertadores. The team reached 35 points and is in seventh position, behind Botafogo only by tiebreak criteria.

Tricolor returns to the field for the Brazilian Championship now at 8:30 pm (Brasília time) next Sunday (21), when it faces Santos, in a classic at Vila Belmiro. Before, however, the team has the most important challenge of the year: it starts the quarterfinals of the Copa Libertadores against LDU, away from home, at 7 pm (Brasília time) on Thursday (18).

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