José López and Kevin Viveros Rodallega did the heavy lifting; Serie A Round 24 mostly argued back

Palmeiras was the clearest read, even if the scoreline got greedy

The best call of the round was Palmeiras to beat Vasco DA Gama. Fipster had José López and Maurício in the scoring picture, and both landed. That mattered because the model was not just guessing at a home win; it had correctly identified where the goals would come from, with José López striking twice and Maurício adding one. The extra wrinkle was Vitor Roque, who was not among the named scorer calls but still got on the sheet. That is a tidy hit rather than a lucky one: the main attacking lanes were right, and Palmeiras used them properly.

The miss that stung most came in Vitória’s direction

The ugliest miss was Vitória v Bahia. Fipster leaned into Vitória’s home scoring profile and named Rene, Renato Kayzer, Ramon, David Duarte and Everaldo as likely routes to goal. None of them scored. Bahia did, twice, through Alejo Véliz and Jean Lucas. The model over-weighted Vitória’s usual attacking shape and under-priced Bahia’s ability to nick control of the game through players it had not put front and centre. Luciano Juba’s standout rating only sharpened that point: Bahia did not need to look flashy to be effective. They just needed to be more accurate than our forecast.

Kevin Viveros Rodallega kept his end of the bargain; others did not

The player story belongs first to Kevin Viveros Rodallega. He was one of Fipster’s called scorers for Atlético Paranaense against Botafogo, and he scored twice. That is exactly why he was flagged: he was treated as the main finishing threat, and he behaved like one. José López did something similar for Palmeiras, turning a correct pre-match call into two goals rather than one. Pedro also justified his inclusion for Flamengo by scoring at Cruzeiro, while Pedro Rocha rewarded Coritiba’s prediction with a goal against Corinthians.

The round also reminded us that being half-right on names is not enough when someone else does the decisive work. Álvaro Barreal was called and scored for Santos, but Eduardo was the unforeseen scorer who denied Fipster a cleaner result there. Matheus Pereira landed as expected for Cruzeiro, yet Keny Arroyo Alvarado supplied the goal that actually changed that match’s balance before Pereira finished it late. And in Fluminense’s win over Remo, Jája Silva was correctly flagged for Remo but it was Hulk and Kevin Serna Jaramillo who turned things around for Fluminense after half-time.

A decent round for striker reads, less so for certainty elsewhere

That leaves a fairly clear takeaway for next week: trust obvious central scorers when they are backed by strong team context, but be less sentimental about home advantage when the opposing side has live finishers of its own. The model found José López and Kevin Viveros Rodallega well enough; it simply gave too much comfort to a few familiar domestic patterns in matches that turned on sharper individual moments. Five ticks out of ten is respectable work without being smug about it. There is room here for more nerve around away threats and fewer assumptions that last week’s favourite route will still be open next week.