Major success for Verdão in 2018, as they were back at lifting the trophy after last season’s second place. There were two major factors contributing to Palmeiras’ success, this season: excellent depth of the squad and Felipe Scolari’s arrival in August. Roger Machado left the club in the 16th round, when Palmeiras was only 6th, 8 points behind Flamengo, with four defeats and five draws accumulated. With Scolari, Palmeiras completed 21 games without a single defeat. An impressive run that left no chances to the opposition. The solid defensive system was key, as they conceded only 11 goals in under Scolari’s guidance.
Palmeiras title was even more impressive as Verdão competed for two other titles until later stages as well. Palmeiras was knocked out from both Libertadores Brazilian Cup only on the semi-finals, which means Palmeiras managed to get that amazing sequence of unbeaten league matches while playing constant midweek matches in other competitions too. Eventually, something had to give in, and Palmeiras was knocked out from Libertadores in a tough clash with Boca Juniors in October after having been eliminated by Cruzeiro from Domestic cup some weeks before.
The key to cope with these frantic sequence of hard matches was the fact that Palmeiras almost had two teams ready to play. In defence, Scolari kept rotating between two different duos: Luan-Gomez and Dracena-Antônio Carlos. Mayke and Marcos Rocha on the right and Diogo Barbosa and Victor Luís on the left were frequently interchanging as full-backs. The options were endless for Scolari to a point where it became hard to know which ones would be the first options for him and which ones were reserves. Felipe Melo, Bruno Henrique, Thiago Santos, Moisés and Lucas Lima were all equally important in the centre. William, Hyoran on the wings, Borja, Deyverson as strikers were also important units. However, there was one player who was arguably irreplaceable: the forward Dudu had an excellent season in 2018 and became the biggest reference for the club’s near future.
