Corinthians 2-0 Sao Paulo: Cohesion versus separation

   In the Arena Corinthians the home side thoroughly overplayed their city rivals, Sao Paulo FC, by quick aggression attacking both from the outside (pushing with the full-backs Fabio Santos and Fagner), and from the inside, (surprising with box-to-box midfielder Elias). After the opener, the Timao soaked pressure up with the very same cohesion deployed at attack. Sao Paulo, on the other hand, showed themselves as quite disjointed a squad with three men (Luis Fabiano, Alan Kardec and Paulo Henrique Ganso) in charge of offending and the rest taking the brunt of defensive duties.

The Corinthians boss, Tite, chose what actually is a 4-3-3 formation: Renato Augusto (the launcher) and Elias (the runner) stuck close to Ralf (the protector) in midfield, while Danilo came on for suspended Peruvian central striker Paolo Guerrero, moving constantly away from the Sao Paulo center-backs. This latter vertical mobility proved crucial as Corinthians overloaded the center of the pitch and controlled the flux of play. The image that precedes these lines being a good example, Elias's gol was created from a nice combination between him and Danilo to surpass Denilson with the assistance of a great Jadson lobbed ball.

                    

The formation employed by Muricy Ramalho was a wingerless midfield diamond (4-3-1-2) in which Ganso performed the trequartista role, and both Luis Fabiano and Alan Kardec failed to move to the channels to provide the much-needed width given the lack of true wingers. In fairness to Ramalho, he could not use Alexandre Pato, a more versatile striker, since he's in loan from Corinthians, and could not use either Ricardo Centurión, the Argentine winger brought from Racing de Avellaneda, due to suspension. The problems for Sao Paulo, however, had more to do with their little cohesion rather than with some certain formation.

Until the Elias's opener eleven minutes from the start of the match, Corinthians pushed Fagner and Fabio Santos in support of Jadson and Emerson (who regularly cut in from the channels). As Denilson, Souza and Maicon were occupied with Elias and Renato Augusto, Corinthians caused one-two situations against the Sao Paulo full-backs almost by default. Even at those early stages Fabio Santos had shot twice against Rogerio Ceni's goal. As the Sao Paulo forward trio was almost totally oblivious to defending, Souza and Maicon faced this impossible dilemma: Should we track the Corinthians full-backs at expense of exposing the midfield, or should we stay in position at expense of exposing the flanks?

The midfielders of Sao Paulo tried to cover both the center and the flanks and, at the end, got caught by Danilo's false nine movement, Renato Augusto's fine passing and Elias' impressive work rate. Had they counted with some help from upfront, they could perhaps offer more in an attacking sense to exploit the space left behind the enemy full-backs. Instead, Corinthians have once again shown their cards as a cohesive squad that moves along the field as a unit but, more importantly, as a well-drilled machine that creates and exploits space from the inside and the outside.