The format of this season's Brazilian National Championship is a regular season plus a playoffs.

Twenty-six teams from all continents of Brazil go through 25 rounds of a single round robin to determine the final regular season standings.

The regular season standings don't decide anything, except for playoff matchups.

The bottom four of the regular season are directly relegated, while the top eight enter the playoffs for a catch-and-match.

The eight teams participating in the playoffs play against each other based on their position in the regular season, with first place against eighth place, second place against seventh place, and so on.

Because the final standings have a lot to do with the opponents they face in the playoffs, although Sao Paulo and San Caetano are basically certain to finish in the top four, or even the top two. But São Paulo still has to compete with San Caetano for first place.

It's just to meet the weaker eighth place after the first round of the playoffs. Currently in eighth place is Coritiba.

This team, São Paulo, can easily beat 3-1 without glory, and if they meet them again in the playoffs, won't it be tantamount to delivering food to the door?

As long as São Paulo finishes first in the regular season, it will qualify for the semifinals in advance.

San Caetano is also intended.

So both teams desperately wanted to be the first place in the whole game, but fortunately, they met in the first round of the playoffs.

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In the twenty-second round, São Paulo had a bye, and they did not rest, but continued to train. It has reached the white-hot stage of the competition, and they have just taken advantage of the opportunity of three consecutive wins to crush San Caetano under them, and at this time, it is natural to completely shake off the opponent in one go.

So when the other teams were playing, the whole São Paulo team did not take a break and rested, but continued to train on the training ground in Brafonta.

In the 22nd round, San Caetano was forced to draw 1:1 at home by another traditional powerhouse, Cruzeiro, and the gap between San Caetano and Sao Paulo was widened to four points.

In the 23rd round, Sao Paulo challenged the Portuguese away.

Glory continued to be positive in the game and eventually completed an assist to help the team beat the Portuguese 3-1.

Three days later, Sao Paulo beat Ponte Preeta 5-2 at home, and although they did not score or assist, Glory was still outstanding and positive.

Kaka, on the other hand, finally scored his first career hat-trick in this match.

It's just that he's too late compared to glory......

After two games, Sao Paulo's lead has been extended to seven points.

Their advantages are growing.

The media has already said that no one will stop São Paulo from finishing first in the regular season.

The trident of Kaka, Glory and Fabiano is becoming more and more proficient and effective.

Fabiano currently leads the scorers list with 21 goals, while Kaka is also in the top five with 16 goals. The 10 goals of Glory are also very impressive for a rookie who is playing in the Brazilian National Championship for the first time.

You must know that the whole team of São Paulo has only scored 52 goals, and the three Tridents have a total of 37 goals, which has accounted for more than two-thirds of the team's total goals.

In the 25th round of the game, Sao Paulo had another bye.

There was no training this time, Osvaldo gave the whole team a day off, and with the lead getting bigger, there was no need to push the team too nervous, and the proper relaxation was to prepare for the playoffs - he was already thinking about the playoffs.

The vast majority of the players took advantage of this rare day of holiday rest.

There are only two exceptions.

In Lakeside Park, Rongguang is training under the guidance of Sun Fengyang.

Kaka also continues to build up his strength and stamina in the gym.

Sixteen goals in a single season is already Kaka's best result since his debut.

If it had been normal, he might have found such a performance unbelievable, and thank God for praising the Lord.

But now, he is not satisfied.

Because behind him, there is a perverted rookie eyeing him......

His chase kept him from letting up for a minute. You must continue to improve yourself, otherwise you will be caught up by rookies and become another victim of his journey against the sky.

In this competition, both sides have been greatly improved. If Kaka hadn't set the goal, perhaps Glory would not have been able to achieve such results in eight months. While others marvel at his rapid progress, how many people can think that Kaka is one of the driving forces for him to work so hard?

And if it weren't for the glory catch-up, Kaka would never have developed a body of muscles and enough physical fitness to cope with the intensity of European competitions before going to Europe. It is impossible to perform so well in the national championship, because of Rongguang, he has no heart to think about transferring to Europe, he is just bent on preventing Rongguang from surpassing him.

This is the "healthy competition" that Osvaldo wants to see.

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After the bye, São Paulo welcomed another strong team, Vasco da Gama, at home.

But this game is no longer a battle of focus. With São Paulo's current lead in the regular season standings, even a loss to Vasco da Gama won't affect their standings.

So even the reporters present in this game are a lot less than that kind of focus battle.

Vasco da Gama have had a good run, having won the Brazilian National Championship last season and have a number of good players in their squad.

But this team has not fared well this year.

They sit 13th in the league so far and will have to give it their all in the next few rounds if they are to qualify for a top-eight playoff spot.

However, they were beaten 5-2 away from home to Sao Paulo.

Such a defeat may explain why Vasco da Gama has been so bad this season.

Glory provided an assist in this game, but still didn't score.

Kaka scored two goals, and the state was hot!

In terms of statistics, Kaka has surpassed Glory across the board, with eighteen goals and seven assists, compared to Glory's only ten goals and six assists.

However, this is a data that is not good compared to Kaka, and compared to Kaka, the glorious data is not good.

But compared to other teammates, his stats are already very good, and compared to a rookie who has only studied football for eight months, it is even more incredible. Not to mention that he is a striker, not a striker, and scoring goals should never have been his vocation in the first place.

So although Rongguang has not scored, there is no criticism in public opinion.

How much better can you ask a player to do for a player who's only been in football for eight months?

However, Rong Guang himself can't tolerate not scoring all the time.

When he didn't score in these games, he seemed to see the colorful banknotes flying away one by one, away from him.

There's nothing more unpleasant than seeing money fly away.

After the match against Vasco da Gama, São Paulo had another bye, and Glory gave up practicing the "croquettes" in favor of desperately practicing his shots.

He wants to improve his marksmanship.

Finally, in the next round of home matches against Victoria BA, the glory is drawn.

He scored a goal in the game to break his six-game goal drought.

Glory was so excited after the goal that he yelled at the camera lens: "This is a goal worth a thousand dollars!" ”

Of course, he shouted in his native language, Chinese, so no one could understand him......

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In the final round of the regular season after this game, São Paulo was ten points ahead of San Caetano.

It's already a sure win.

Therefore, in the last round of the game, the main players of the first team, including Rongguang, Kaka and others, did not participate in the game.

They were given a rare two-day holiday – the day of the game and the day after the game combined.

Ahead of the playoffs, Osvaldo wants to give these players plenty of rest.

The rest of the game wasn't as good as the regular season.

In the regular season, São Paulo can be as much as 10 points ahead of second-placed San Caetano. One important reason is also important to ignore, and that is that many teams didn't give their best in the regular season, as long as they could finish in the top eight.

Then recharge your energy and go all out in the playoffs to hit the championship.

That's the idea for almost every team that qualifies for the playoffs.

If it weren't for Sao Paulo's new tactics, Osvaldo would have wanted to deliberately suppress the team's form. Bring out the best in the playoffs.

However, because he had to get used to the new tactics and formations, and to get the players familiar with them as quickly as possible, Osvaldo was left to his team – and he wanted to see how far he could go when the team was at full strength.

He is happy with the result, and as long as the team can maintain this form, Osvaldo believes they really have a good chance of winning the national victory. It's really not good, even if you don't win the championship, you can still qualify for the Copa Libertadores.

But first of all, these players must not get injured and have to rest well. The problem for São Paulo now is that there is a huge gap between the quality of the substitutes and the main players, and if the main players are injured, there are too few substitutes who can replace them.

In order to avoid them from getting hurt, they watched the last round of the game.

In the end, Sao Paulo, who came on as a substitute, beat Paisandu 1-0 away.

With 18 wins, 3 draws and 4 losses, he accumulated 57 points, 12 points ahead of second-placed San Caetano, and won the first place in the regular season.

They will play the eighth-placed team in the first round of the playoffs.

But their opponent is not the previous Coritiba.

The previous contest for eighth place in the regular season were Santos and Coritiba.

As a result, in the last round of the regular season, Santos lost 2:3 to San Caetano, and the eighth place was not guaranteed, but their rival Coritiba also unexpectedly lost 0:4 to the Gama team. In the end, Santos entered the playoffs with an eighth-placed finish.

As a result, the underdog expected by São Paulo is gone, and it is replaced by a young guard team Santos, who is both energetic and powerful, and has been playing better and better this season.