Flamengo score five at Mirassol, and the game they have in hand is against the same team

Flamengo went to Mirassol on Sunday needing a win to stay in touch with Palmeiras and left having scored five. The 5-1 at the Estádio José Maria de Campos Maia, which finished in the early hours of Monday India time, was the kind of away performance that changes how a title race feels rather than just how it looks on paper.

Four goals in 21 second-half minutes

Jorge Carrascal put Flamengo ahead on 22 minutes, finishing after Varela’s cross was spilled and Plata squared it. That was the only goal of the first half, and it flattered Mirassol.

The second half took 21 minutes to finish the game. Carrascal fed Luiz Araújo for the second on 53, Ayrton Lucas got to the byline and pulled it back for Pedro on 56, and Carrascal broke on the counter and picked out Pedro again on 66. Samuel Lino added the fifth on 74 after Arrascaeta worked space in midfield. João Victor headed one back for Mirassol from a Reinaldo corner on 77, and even that took a deflection off Carrascal to go in.

The table now turns on one postponed fixture

Palmeiras lead the Brasileirão on 48 points from 23 matches. Flamengo have 45 from 22, and a better goal difference, 25 against 21. The match they have not played is against Mirassol, the round-four fixture that never happened.

So the arithmetic is unusually clean. Win that game and Flamengo are level on points with Palmeiras and ahead of them on goal difference, having already beaten Mirassol 5-1 once this month. It is the sort of position a leader hates: three points clear and not actually in front.

Cruzeiro, then Cruzeiro

Leonardo Jardim, in charge since March on a deal that runs to the end of 2027, emptied his bench late at Mirassol with one eye elsewhere. Flamengo host Cruzeiro at the Maracanã on Wednesday in the second leg of the Copa Libertadores last 16, level after a 1-1 in Belo Horizonte where Keny Arroyo scored on 53 minutes and Lucas Paquetá replied on 67. Then they go back to Cruzeiro on 22 August in the league.

Flamengo are the defending Libertadores champions, and a five-goal away win three days before a knockout tie is useful in a way a narrow one is not. It let Jardim take players off with twenty minutes still to play.

Mirassol are running out of room

For the home side this was a bad night in a bad run. Mirassol sit 16th with 23 points from 22 games, six wins and five draws against eleven defeats, one place above the relegation zone. They have now conceded five at home to a side who still have to play them again in the rearranged round-four fixture, one Flamengo have every reason to treat as a cup final.

That is a strange, cruel piece of scheduling. Mirassol’s survival may end up decided by a match Flamengo need to win the league, played whenever the calendar allows, against a team that has just put five past them.

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