“After the red card and the early goal,” he said. “Because of our inexperience we didn’t manage to come back. We have to heal the wound and look at the next game.”
If his team needed experience maybe Carpegiani should have looked for an answer on his bench of substitutes. One solution to Sao Paulo’s inexperience comes immediately to most people’s mind: Rivaldo. But the World Cup champion didn’t come in and watched the entire game from the bench.
“I had the plan of putting him in,” Carpegiani said. “But due to the expulsion, I needed other players, it wasn’t an ideal game for Rivaldo. Had he played he wouldn’t have solved the game for us.”
Rivaldo and Carpegiani clashed after Sao Paulo elimination in the Brazilian Cup. Since then, player and coach sat down with the club President and resolved their differences. But since then Rivaldo hasn’t been used much.
