Internacional’s exact call stood out; Vitória’s late surge and a few stray scorers did the rest

Internacional gave the round its one proper bullseye. Elsewhere, Fipster was mostly in the right postcode and still managed to knock on the wrong door. That is usually how a 1 STAR week feels: one prediction looks sharp, a few look merely plausible, and the rest remind you that football has no interest in being helpful.

Internacional was the read that held up

The best call of the round was Internacional to beat Corinthians by 2-1, and it came off for reasons that were visible before kick-off rather than after a lucky bounce. Fipster had treated Internacional’s attacking edge as the decisive factor, and that is exactly where the game went: they found enough quality to win by one, not enough to turn it into theatre. The scoreline matched the logic of the pick. Not glamorous, but correct — which is more useful than glamorous, most weeks.

Vitória was where the model got greedy with the wrong names

The miss that hurt most was Vitória against Chapecoense-sc. Fipster leaned away from Vitória’s actual scorers and toward Rene, Renato Kayzer and Marcinho, none of whom scored. The match instead belonged to Erick and Matheuzinho, who each scored twice, with Matheuzinho also adding two assists. That is not a small correction; it is a full rewrite of who mattered. The model over-weighted Chapecoense’s supposed threat and under-read how much damage Vitória could do through different routes entirely. Once Erick started scoring and Matheuzinho started feeding him, the prediction had very little left to stand on.

The round belonged to a few very specific people — some expected, some not at all

Among the players Fipster had flagged pre-match, Neymar was the clearest success story. He scored twice for Santos and was one of only two called scorers who actually delivered more than once this round. Kevin Viveros Rodallega also paid back part of his billing for Atletico Paranaense with a goal, while José López did what he so often seems determined to do: justify being written down before anyone else has had their coffee.

But the round’s loudest performances came from outside the pre-match shortlist. Erick and Matheuzinho turned Vitória into a problem nobody had priced properly, with Matheuzinho’s two goals and two assists making him the standout of the weekend by some distance. Gabriel Delfim’s eight saves for Atletico-MG also deserve a nod; when a goalkeeper posts that sort of number, he is usually doing his best to keep everyone else from having an awkward Monday.

A cleaner next round will need fewer false certainties up front

'The lesson is not that Fipster should stop trusting attacking form; it is that it needs to be choosier about which scorer profiles are actually driving a fixture. Round 29 had enough evidence for one strong call and several decent ones, but too many of the misses came from backing familiar names when newer ones were doing the real work. Next week should start by asking a simpler question: who is most likely to decide this match now, not who looked likeliest last month? That would save everyone a bit of time — and probably a few predictions too.