The battle to win the Brazilian Championship is set to go down the wire. Four teams remain in the title race and it will be interesting to see how things turn out over the next five games. Only seven points separate the top four teams and all sides still have a mathematical chance of winning the title.
Flamengo are one of those four teams and they continued their recent impressive form with a 3-0 2in over Sport Recife on Monday night.
Asides leaders Internacional, Flamengo are the next best in-form side in the league with four wins from their last five games.
On this occasion at Ilha do Retiro, the expected names of Gabigol, Bruno Henrique and Pedro from the bench fired Rogerio Ceni’s men to an easy victory.
Gabigol opened the scoring as early as the fourth minute and hit double digits for the season as he bagged his 10th goal of the campaign early on.
Fifteen minutes later, Bruno Henrique got on the score-sheet after scoring from a deflection via Arrascaeta’s shot.
The game was mostly dominated by Flamengo who had other chances to increase their tally. Pedro came off the bench in the 77th minute and eventually got a goal of his own in the closing stages of the game.
The forward got on the end of a pass from Everton Ribeiro and fired home is 13th league goal of the season. He also remains Flamengo’s top-scorer this term.
As one would expect, VAR was another talking point in the game. Just 11 minutes into the second half, Ronaldo Henrique, from Sport, was sent off for apparently hitting Gabigol in the arm. However, the decision was reviewed by VAR and it was reversed to a yellow card instead.
With the victory, Flamengo return to second place and maintain pressure on leaders Internacional. Fla are only four points behind. Sport remain stuck in the relegation zone.
Flamengo will take on Vasco next Thursday while Sport travel to Nilton Santos to take on Botafogo next Thursday.
