Today, two teams with completely different ambitions in the championship meet at the famous Maracana. Flamengo is in a big rush and in pursuit of the first place, while Ceara is trying to win very important points in the fight for survival. But let's start with the hosts. The beginning of the season for Flamengo was, one might say, disastrous. They were near the bottom of the table for a long time and the management had a lot more patience than they probably needed for former coach Paulo Sousa. The management hired the experienced Dorival Junior as a coach and the change was visible very quickly. At the beginning of his mandate, the team suffered two defeats, one in the league and the other in the cup, both against Atlético Mineiro. But that was expected for a team with extremely shaken confidence. But after that, their fantastic streak started, which is still going on. Since then, they have played as many as 20 games and have only one loss and two draws. They are currently on a fantastic 15 game unbeaten run and it really doesn't look like they will be stopping anytime soon. The big innovation that the new coach introduced to the team is the possibility for Flamengo to play with two or three completely different teams, and still record convincing victories. In the vast majority of games that they played recently, the "second team" took to the field. Even though players like Gabriel Barbosa, David Luiz, Bruno Henrique, Diego and other superstars that this team has were on the bench for those matches, the results were not lacking. In such a situation, the excellent striker Pedro stood out, who is currently the team's top scorer. Flamengo's matches have been very interesting lately and they play very attractive football. Flamengo still has a chance to win all three trophies in the season, after very convincing victories in the semifinals of the Copa Libertadores, where they defeated the Argentine Velez 4-0 away from home, and in the semifinals of the Brazilian Cup they defeated Sao Paulo 3-1. After yesterday's setback for Palmeiras and the draw with Bragantino, with a possible victory in today's match, Flamengo would reduce the difference to the leading team to five points. And with 14 rounds to the end of the championship and with Flamengo's game like this, it really seems that the title is not an unattainable goal. Gabriel Barbosa, David Luiz and Thiago Maia will almost certainly be in the team for this match, who are suspended for the return match against Velez and there is no reason for them to remain on the bench for this match.

As for Ceara, they are in a very bad situation for them and in even worse shape. They are in 15th place in the table with only two points above the danger zone. They play very unattractive football, with a goal difference of 23 scored and 24 conceded. They have only won three points from the last five matches, and in that period they played against some teams that are in a similar form as them and they simply had to win. They haven't won a single away game in the last five matches and it would really be a huge surprise if they get a positive result in such a difficult away game. Ceara will be led from the bench for the first time by the new coach Lucho Gonzalez, and the question is how much time he had to work with the new players. Another problem for Ceara is not playing the standard central defenders, so the central defenders in this match should be Messias and Lacerda, who cannot boast of a large number of minutes so far and the big question is how they will manage in today's match.

The difference in quality between these two teams is huge, another advantage of Flamengo is playing in front of a full Maracana and I really believe that they can achieve a convincing victory here.