There were high hopes for a successful season when Timão hired back Fábio Carille, the man who drove Corinthians to 2017 title. However, the best Timão could do in 2019 was to win the relatively irrelevant Paulistão (regional cup).
It soon became clear that Corinthians was going to struggle, as they were never able to pick robust and convincing wins together with several compromising draws.
Still, Timão was on the race at the 22nd round, with “just” 8 points behind the leaders and a decent 3rd place shared with rivals Santos.
However, a terrible sequence of 8 games without winning (4 defeats and 4 draws) took away all hopes the fans were keeping in the end of September. Carille was eventually sacked after a bad 1-4 defeat to rivals Flamengo and that left Corinthians in 8th, 26 points behind leaders, and at high risk of missing out Libertadores.
A few players were in clear poor form all over the season: Jadson lost his importance, but Sornoza was not a worthy successor. Vagner Love was still the go-to source for goals as Boselli and Gustagol were much too irregular. The usual Cássio and Fagner continue the references, together with new signing Gil.
Pedrinho and Mateus Vital played more, but were still not completely up to the heights one expect from the talented duo. Next season success will highly depend on the affirmation of youngsters like these two.
Coach Tiago Nunes arrives at Corinthians for 2020 after major success with Athlético PR in the last couple of seasons.
