Ramón Sosa Acosta was the bright spot; the rest of Serie A made a liar of the model

One tidy hit was not enough to rescue the round, but it did at least stop the page from becoming a full apology note. Mirassol beat Remo 2-1, which was close to what Fipster had written down, while too many of the bigger calls elsewhere went stale: Corinthians were held, Fluminense were blanked, Flamengo were dragged into a draw, and Palmeiras turned a narrow home-loss call into a rout. That is how a round ends up looking lopsided without being especially mysterious. The model saw some of the right names. It just kept backing them in the wrong rooms.

Mirassol gave the model its one proper nod

The best read was not clever. It was simply close to the football that turned up. Fipster expected Mirassol to win and expected goals from their attack rather than from chaos, which is exactly why this one landed as a tick even though the scorers were not the ones named pre-match. The important part was the shape of it: Mirassol still found enough going forward to justify the home win, and Remo still had enough threat to avoid being brushed aside. That is a decent model read in miniature — right side, right winner, wrong cast list.

Palmeiras was where the numbers got ahead of themselves

The ugliest miss came at Vitoria v Palmeiras. Fipster leaned on Vitoria’s home solidity and treated Palmeiras as if they would need a fairly ordinary away performance to nick it. Instead, Palmeiras tore straight through that idea and won 4-0, with Jhon Arias Andrade and Maurício both scoring from outside the pre-match shortlist and Ramón Sosa Acosta adding another after being one of the few called scorers who actually delivered. The mistake was not simply picking the wrong winner; it was over-valuing defensive comfort and under-valuing how quickly Palmeiras could turn one opening into several. Once that first goal arrived before half-time, the rest of the prediction looked like it had been left in a different postcode.

The round belonged to players Fipster half-saw — and some it did not see at all

The player story is where this round becomes useful rather than merely annoying. Matheus Pereira justified his billing for Cruzeiro by scoring again, so did Samuel Lino for Flamengo, and Ramón Sosa Acosta rewarded one of Fipster’s few successful calls with a goal for Palmeiras. But those were only part of it. Leonel Picco popped up for Remo without any pre-match call at all, Vitinho scored for Internacional when Fipster had instead been looking at Johan Carbonero Balanta, Alerrandro and Pedro, and Jhon Arias Andrade changed Vitoria v Palmeiras from a tight home lean into something much less polite. The model did not miss every dangerous player; it missed which dangerous player would matter first.

That matters because several of the called scorers were sensible enough on paper. They just did not cash in: Yuri Alberto, Andre, John Kennedy and Pedro all looked like reasonable anchors before kick-off and none of them scored in their matches. In other words, this was not a round where Fipster chased ghosts; it backed familiar threats that never got their moment while lesser-seen names took over instead. The next round asks for less faith in reputation alone and more respect for who is actually finishing moves right now. A modest request, really. Football can be terribly rude about ignoring your shortlist.