“A marathon of resilience” – Abel Ferreira reflects on Palmeiras’ Brazilian title win | OneFootball

Palmeiras were crowned Campeonato Brasileiro champions for the second successive season on Wednesday evening, giving manager Abel Ferreira yet another trophy with the São Paulo outfit.

Verdão came into the final matchday with a three-point lead and a comfortable goal difference advantage over Atletico Mineiro and Flamengo, meaning a 1-1 at Cruzeiro was enough to secure the 12th league title of the club’s history.

A major aspect of the 2023 Brasileirão was the surprise performance of Botafogo, who led the table for most of the season under Portuguese managers Luís Castro and his successor Bruno Lage. However, Botafogo endured a monumental collapse – costing Lage his job – which saw them end the campaign with eleven winless matches.

Palmeiras took advantage to take top spot in the final weeks of the season, after which Abel admitted his side had showed the greater nerve. “It’s a competition of consistency, a marathon of resilience,” Abel said. “In this championship, a team that was able to deal better with moments of difficulty ended up winners. It was the team that never gave up, even in moments of difficulty.

“We had a meeting with the players [after a difficult start] where we set two objectives. One was the aim of fighting for the title - I told the players that we had a path, which was to fight for the title until the end. And the other was our pride and our character as a team that consistently wins titles.

“More than anything, it was to bring this pride and character that I know this team has and that was lost at some point this year. We cannot forget because there were many people who wanted to forget the titles we won. It’s been three years of winning titles consistently. The difficult thing isn’t that, it’s that the greater your wins, the greater your losses.

“I told the players many times, when we went ahead, to put themselves in Botafogo’s shoes a little bit, how much that team must be suffering. That’s how the league is, but we were the capable team that was most prepared to know how to deal with adversity. I think the Copa Libertadores semi-final defeat prepared us and gave us strength to be able to compete until the end. Say what you want, we are fair winners.”

Future uncertain

Abel’s future at the club, where he still has one more year on his contract, has been cast into doubt of late. The Portuguese has regularly hinted at needing a break from the hectic Brazilian schedule, while reports broke towards the end of last month that Qatari club Al Sadd were prepared to make Abel the best-paid coach in world football.

“I would like to say that absurd news is coming out, about money, what I earn,” Abel said during Wednesday’s post-match press conference. “It’s all a lie. It was never a question of money. If so, I would have left two or three months ago. A month ago, I didn’t want to listen to a team, but I also can’t hide the fact that I’m just imagining that on January 17th we will be competing again!

“I also said I’m tired, it’s been three years in a row. The more we win, the greater the demand. The more we win, the more energy I have to give. Next year it will be even worse. We will not have rest, we will have games every two days. For next year, we will have players called up for national teams... people have to understand that at this moment the clubs that will face Palmeiras in the Campeonato Paulista [in January] are already preparing themselves.

“When we return everyone will want to beat Palmeiras. They will demand from me that I do better than I did last year and I don’t know if I have enough energy to give it to the players. Right now I need to rest. I’m going to do what I’ve always done, I'm going to go home to my family and rest.”

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