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Zé Ricardo laments elimination: "We really wanted to move on"

The coach spoke to reporters after Flamengo's farewell match in the Copa Sudamericana.

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After the end of the match between Flamengo and Palestino (CHI), which ended with the elimination of Mais Querido from the next stage of the Copa Sudamericana, coach Zé Ricardo gave a press conference in the press room of the Kléber Andrade Stadium, in Cariacica. The Flamengo coach analyzed the team's 2-1 defeat to the Chilean team and spoke about the continuation of the work, emphasizing the important match against São Paulo for the Brazilian Championship, which will take place next Saturday (01).

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See the main excerpts:

Flamengo's farewell to the Copa Sudamericana.
Overcoming a two-goal deficit isn't easy. We started the second half much better, but after 30 minutes we lost momentum and organization. I'm sad we were eliminated. On the one hand, it will reduce the number of trips, but we had been preparing for some time to deal with them while minimizing losses. We were managing to do that. We really wanted to continue in this competition.

Team performance in the match
We didn't have a good first half. During the pre-match talk, both here and in Chile, we were very emphatic about the quality of their team. We gave away too many rebounds on silly plays. Overall, Palestino was better than us in the first half, with more balance in the second. I need to give them credit, as they were better than us for most of both games.

Opting for an alternative team for the match.
I have no regrets. We make a plan, and this was a calculated risk. We had several players who felt the effects of today's match quite a bit. If we had advanced to the next phase, we would have needed those players. We prepared for this long ago and followed that plan.

Work sequence
Today is a hangover day for us. We'll return to the training center tomorrow to reassess our performance today. I believe we'll be recovered for the match we have on Saturday at Morumbi. It will be another game with a very high degree of difficulty.