Corinthians vs Guarani Prediction: The Timão wants to enter its favorite competition with a victory

Despite not winning the tournament since 2019, Corinthians, with 30 titles, is still the team with the most wins in the Campeonato Paulista. The Timão hasn't won a title in over four years, which is a negative record for this great club. Winning the Paulista again is a major goal for Corinthians, which needs to find its winning ways again. In recent years, the team has lost quality while rival Palmeiras has reached a very high level. Guarani has never won the competition and goes into this match as an underdog.

The club is restructuring its squad, and this season, it has seen many players come and go. The sale of Gabriel Moscardo could be the club's big deal this season, but an injury is preventing the sale to PSG from becoming official. Mano Menezes will have a lot of work to do to build a solid team with so many changes. The Timão will present themselves with some new faces in the starting eleven. Corinthians fans are hoping that their team will give them more joy this year than in previous years.

This club from Campinas, a city 90 km from São Paulo, has never won the Campeonato Paulista, but it did win the Brasileirão in 1978! Guarani is, like Santos, one of the two teams to have won the Brazilian championship without being based in a state capital. The club has never won a state championship but has twice reached the final of the Campeonato Paulista. The team plays in the Série B, where it finished in mid-table last season. Its great rival is Ponte Preta, a team that is curiously in the same group, but according to Paulista regulations, teams from the same group don't play each other in the regular phase. The team's mascot is an Indian, paying homage to the indigenous tribe of the Guarani. It's a club with a rich history and will be looking for a surprise in the opening round.

It will be a surprise if the Timão doesn't beat a Série B side at home. That's precisely the result I'm going to bet on, even though it's Corinthians' first game of the season, so the value of the team in the 2024 version is still unknown. Guarani has also changed its team a lot from last year, so there's bound to be a lack of familiarity.