Gremio secured an impressive 3rd-placed finish in the 2015 Serie A season, but slumped down to 9th spot in the table in 2016. It wasn’t all bad, though, for the Porto Alegre club, as they won the Brazilian Cup final to ensure that the season ended with some blue and white confetti. The reason they fell quite so far in the league table actually has a lot to do with their cup run, as coach Renato Gaucho – who took over from Roger Machado in the September – rested a lot of players in their final couple of months of league matches in order to prioritise the cup competition. Realising that their best chance of qualifying for the 2017 Copa Libertadores was to win the cup, they essentially gave up on the league and won just once in the final eight matches of the Serie A campaign. They had started the season well, though, winning four of the first six matches as they looked to build on the good work they’d started in 2015. Under Machado and then under Gaucho, the team continued to play a passing game from defence, though midfield and up to the front, but often struggled to break defences down with this approach. A lot of their matches were quite dull affairs, with Gremio often dominating possession but unable to find a way through the deep-sitting defensive labyrinths of their opponents. As such, they had six 0-0s during the season, while they failed to score on another seven occasions. The fact that their top goalscorer Luan managed just six goals in the whole season summed up how difficult they had found it to score.
However, there were plenty of positives to take from their defensive performances and their star player was once again centre-back Pedro Geromel. He led the back line well and made the Brazilian FA’s Team of the Season for the second consecutive year, but he was helped by the impressive performances of right-back Edilson and left-back Marcelo Oliveira, while 25-year-old Walter Kannemann had a breakout second half of the season and played well alongside Geromel at centre-back. It certainly helped that Gremio had the third most possession of any team in the league, but their reliable back line were usually on hand to step in when they did lose the ball, while goalkeeper Marcelo Grohe was waiting just behind them if needed.
Gremio will now look to build on their Brazilian Cup win by making a real push for next season’s title. Renato Gaucho had only been given a three-month contract when he took over, but that has been extended after the cup success and he’ll now look forward to a full pre-season with his players, during which he’ll surely hope to improve and evolve their possession-based approach. That kind of control works well in cup competitions, but in order to avoid picking up so many draws, Gremio might benefit from being a little more direct in the 2017 Serie A season. They could also use a quality centre-forward, one who can contribute more than just six goals.
