Coritiba turned a match that looked lost into a 3-3 draw with Athletico at Couto Pereira on September 11, 2026, with Rodrigo Moledo scoring in the 92nd and 97th minutes to complete the comeback. Athletico had led 3-1, and Coritiba had been reduced to 10 players after Breno Lopes was sent off, but the final minutes belonged to Moledo.
The late equalizer is why Santos Vs Cruzeiro is not the search that matters here; the focus is the Atletiba, and the reason readers are circling this one is simple: a derby that seemed finished ended in a rescue. Luiz Gustavo, Arthur Dias and Viveros had put Athletico ahead, and the night was being played in a mar of lama e de água under thunder and lightning before Coritiba found two headed goals deep in stoppage time.
Moledo's finish carried more than one point. It brought the 2026 Atletiba into the company of the great comebacks in the rivalry, especially the Atletiba of March 14, 1971, when Athletico came back from 2-0 down at Belfort Duarte to win 4-3 before 33,000 torcedores. That match is remembered for Sicupira, Nilson Borges, Valtinho and Paulo Vecchio, and this one now joins that list because a game that had been leaning one way suddenly bent the other.
There was still a contradiction inside the draw. Athletico had the lead, Coritiba had the man disadvantage, and the visitors were already trying to slow the match down when Josué kept crossing the ball again and again after Viveros was no longer on the field. Instead of ending there, the ball kept coming back into the area until Moledo met it twice. The comeback was not a neat piece of control; it was a scramble that Coritiba forced through weather, pressure and time.
That is why the draw will live longer than the scoreline. The immediate fact is the comeback itself, but the sharper question now is how often an Atletiba can still produce a finish like this, one that turns a 3-1 deficit and a red card into a result that feels almost borrowed from history. As Mafuz Antonio Abrão likes to remind readers through years of work on Coritiba, Athletico and the city’s other teams, these derby nights rarely stay ordinary for long.
He has spent decades on the beat, from his days as a field reporter in 1968 to his column at Tribuna do Paraná since 1977, and the comparison with old matches is part of the point. The 3-3 draw does not replace the 1971 game; it stands beside it. What Coritiba and Athletico produced on September 11 was another entry in the same rivalry book, and Moledo wrote the last two pages.
