There was only one thing to chat about in São Paulo’s bars on Thursday night . Three clubs from São Paulo were eliminated from Copa do Brasil the day before, so the drinking was accompanied by mourning the losses, and debating what went wrong.
One of the most surprising of these results was Palmeiras’, as they are clearly the best team in Brazil at the moment and were eliminated at home.
“Has Gabriel Jesus gone to Manchester City already?”, asked a friend, clearly provoking the Palmeiras supporter on the table, one of the most fanatic football fans I know.
“Yes. I don’t know why he hasn’t played against Barcelona,” he answered, sarcastically.
When you see a guy like this criticising one of their homegrown stars, you know there’s something wrong.
Despite Palmeiras’ good results at the Brazilian league, Gabriel Jesus is very far from living his best days. He’s scored only one goal in his 12 last games for the club, which is why there so much fuss around his performances.
The general consensus would be that he could be hiding from the game, maybe afraid of getting injured before moving to Manchester City, which will happen in a couple of months.
But the truth is he’s been very poor. He’s back to diving, which, just like in England, is considered an awful habit, and it’s common among young players. Gabriel had gone past his diving stage, but it’s recently returned to his game.
He’s also picking the hardest choices, as if he was trying to prove he can decide the game on his own. That means that many times he’s choosing beauty over effectiveness, which isn’t a very wise thing to do at this stage of the season.
The strangest thing is that he had two great performances for Brazil a week ago, scoring goals against Bolivia and Venezuela and telling the country he should be our number nine for years.
Much of the exacerbation has come after he returned from national team duty, as if wearing the yellow shirt alongside Neymar, Coutinho and others was convincing him he’s already a top player and making Palmeiras a playground.
The Brazil games prove that despite his clear drop of form, the soon to be Manchester City player hasn’t forgotten how to play football. The problem is his head isn’t focused on doing the right things for his club.
Is he having a conscious or subconscious break before joining the very demanding work of Pep Guardiola? Maybe that’s it. Maybe what’s happening now shouldn’t even be a concern for Manchester City fans. As long as he changes his mentality once he gets on that plane to Heathrow.
However, what should have been a brilliant legacy left at Palmeiras may be somewhat tarnished.
