FRANCE BRAZIL 1/4 FINAL WORLD CUP 1986

PROBABLY THE GREATEST FOOTBALL GAME EVER PLAYED...

Fooball in Brazil- the Players

Brazil has enough talent to form at least four National teams. When young boys are asked what they want to be when they grow up, the number one answer is football player. Why not? Being paid to play, having all of the girls running after you, I too would aspire to that if I was a boy.
Football players are elevated to godlike status here in Brazil. The Supreme Being of football is Pele. Under him is an endless list of players who have helped their team or the National team to glory at one time or another in history. A short list of my favorites:

1.Mane Garrincha. Played alongside Pele and in my opinion was just as important as Pele. Had crooked legs that would confuse the adversary while he dribbled around them.

2. Romario. Short, full of attitude, was responsible for the 1994 World Cup victory. He has scored more than 1000 goals in his career and recently hung up his soccer cleats at the age of 42.

3. Rogerio Ceni. Sao Paulo idol. Best goalkeeper in Brazil.

4. Ronaldo. Dubbed the phenomenon. Strong explosive player, brought the World Cup to Brazil for the fifth time in 2002.


5. Ronaldinho. Magician with the ball. Dribbles, runs and scores.


6. Kaka. Pure thoroughbred class.

At the moment, after the disappointing results in 2006, the Brazilian team is going through a player renewal.
Alexandre Pato is one to watch..

Flamengo 2008

Football in Brazil..The Passion

Now that I have explained the 'what time are you?', I will now proceed to illustrate the passion of the fans.
By nature, Brazilians are very passionate people. They are exhuberant, loud, exagerated, and don't go unnoticed. Latin blood. Sometimes I find that they border on bad Mexican soap opera behaviour (especially the women, but that is another blog entry..).
Every year,out of the twenty teams competing in the Brazilian championship league,the top four teams will go on to the Libertadors Cup( Latin America's version of the UEFA championship) the bottom four teams will be demoted to the second division.Last season, the local favorite, Flamengo was threatened to be demoted to the second division. Halfway through the season, they were hovering between 16th and 18th position.
But something happened. The Flamengo fans didn't give up. They could have just abandoned their team and let them drift into Serie B inferno.They didn't. They filled the Maracana stadium for every home game. People would bring statues of Saint Judas and Saint George to the stadium, to pray to a higher power to bring their team back up from the gates of hell. They yelled, chanted, and put their faith behind the team. It was something that I have never seen in my life. As I mentioned in my earlier post, the fans here make the Red Mile in Calgary look like a Boy Scout jamboree. Post game fights can happen, but nothing to the scale of the British hooligans.
On the day of the game, fans wear the team jersey. IF the game is sold out, it is shown on TV. Needless to say, when the game is on, the outside world is inexistent to the supporters. Passion for the team runs so high that cases of heart attacks increase during televised football games.
Support for Flamengo was so intense, that the team managed to finish the season in second place, behind Sao Paulo. You will notice that there is no player on the Flamengo team using the number 12 jersey. The number 12 jersey belongs to the fans. The fans are considered the 12th player on the field.
When World Cup comes around, all supporters join together to support the national team AKA the 'Selecao'..the selection. The country literally stops when Brazil plays.

Football in Brazil..What is Your Team?

If I had a dollar for every time someone asked me what my team was, I would be up there with Bill Gates and Warren Buffett.
Being a fan for a certain team is a decision that will rule your life. Once chosen, one cannot change teams, as that would be akin to treachery and treason. I find this tribal obsession of being a fan of a certain team quite amuzing. For my children, they suffer from a dilemma. Their father is a fan of the Fluminense team (as the club is based out of the neighborhood where their father grew up)and their grandfather is a Flamengo fan. I, on the other hand, could care less. For me,in the moment that there are two teams on the field, I will chose who to cheer for at the opening whistle (usually based on how fab their uniforms look). I just like to watch a good game being played.
Brazil is due to play against Canada in a friendly match....now I am in a dilemma....

Football in Brazil...Part One-Introduction

I admit it. I love soccer. Ever since I watched the World Cup in 1982 with my German cousins, I was hooked. I had never seen such passion for a game that basically consists of 22 players running around after a leather sphere, trying to shoot it into a goal the size of a double garage door.
I witnessed Brazil's agonizing defeat at the hands of the French. World Cup quarter finals, 1986, Brazil vs. France. On one side the French, Platini, Fernandez, Tigana and Giresse. Brazil on the opposite side with idols such as Zico, Socrates and Junior. What a game!!!! Both teams playing with such finesse. Tied after 90 minutes of play, it was into overtime. Still no winner. The result had to be played out by penalty kicks. In the end, the French went on to the next round only to be beaten by the Germans in the semi's.
This was the first time I had seen Brazilian fans. They put the Red Mile in Calgary to shame.
But it wasn't until the 1994 World Cup that I really saw the insanity that soccer can cause to any normal person. Watching the final in a Franco Brazilian restaurant, Felix, in Soho New York, full of Brazilians, across the street another restaurant( Cincocento) full of Italians and Argentinians. Brazil vs. Italy. Penalty shoot out. If Brazil got it right, 'my'restaurant went nuts. When Italy scored, the other 'restaurant went nuts. Finally when Roberto "whats-up-with-the mullet-ponytail?" Biaggio kicked the final ball over the goalpost, the Brazilian fans went nuts. Tables in the restaurant suddenly became bongo drums, people were chanting, crying, hugging, kissing. Brazil had won its fourth World Cup after a 24 year drought. The party poured out into the street. It was so nuts that NYPD had to close the intersection of West Broadway and Grand.
Not even an imprompto street party prepared me for the Brazilian soccer fan IN Brazil.

Off the Beaten Path of Rio de Janeiro

Most people come to Rio de Janeiro and never go beyond their beach hotel. For sports enthusiasts, Rio de Janeiro has so much to offer!!
For starters, the beach. Surfing, sailing, windsurfing, kitesurfing are just the beginning.
Working your way up, there is hangliding and parasailing. You take off from one of the mountains behind Rio and land on Sao Conrado beach below.
The Tijuca National Forest (largest urban forest reserve in the world) has hiking trails, waterfalls, and climbing routes.Rio de Janeiro has over 400 climbing routes within the city limits.
One can sail in and around the Guanabara Bay on everything from Lasers to full on Swan yachts.
Two hours up the coast is some of the best scuba diving to be found anywhere in Arraial de Cabo. The town is as ugly as hell, but you can go out on a traneira and explore grottos and caves for snorkelling, spearfishing and scuba diving. The water is transparent and cold due to a phenomenon of cold water currents from Antartica that get pushed upwards from the bottom of the sea, bringing with it cold clean water full of fish.
Two hours south of Rio is Angra dos Reis and its 365 islands, the most famous being Ilha Grande. Lush tropical Atlantic forest, inlets, beaches...its truly paradise. You will need to rent a boat to see the best of this area. Farther down from Angra is Parati, the antique port city that was used by the Portuguese to send gold to Portugal, mined and carried by slaves all the way from Minas Gerais State 400 kms away.
There is a lot more to Rio than Carnaval, football and the beach...

Only in Rio de Janeiro

Yes folks,if you look close enough, you will see a hanglider out my window. That is the beauty of living in Rio de Janeiro, its never a dull moment.

My Alarm Clock

 

Watch Out, Brazil is Going to Kick Some Butt

Food prices, oil prices are all going up up up. Rice is being hoarded, riots happening in Haiti, Iowa farmers buying tracts of land in Roraima State here in Brazil. The price of corn, wheat and rice is going through the roof. Droughts in Australia, along with the appetite for ethanol are being considered the major cause of this price increase.
When I went to Calgary a few weeks ago to visit family, I flew from Rio via Houston and then up to Calgary. I call it the petroleum milk run. All three cities are major oil cities, so the chances of sitting next to a petroleum person is very high. As it turned out, I sat next to a woman who is part of Petrobras in Houston, and she works in the ethanol division.
I asked her about the ethanol industry in Brazil and in the rest of the world and i learned something very interesting. In Brazil, ethanol is made from sugar cane. The leftover of the sugar cane is used as fuel to power the ethanol plant. Talk about sustainability and non polluting! In contrast, the ethanol plants in the US use corn to extract ethanol and the husks are not used to power the ethanol plants. They need to burn coal....
We need to stop using major food sources to make ethanol. Sugarcane is NOT a major food source, corn wheat and rice are.
Petrobras is poised to kick some butt in the near future.....

Dorothy Stang, On Behalf of the Decent People in Brazil, I Apologize

Injustice has been served yet again here in Brazil. The cold blooded murderers have gotten off scot-free. I am not Brazilian, yet as a Brazilian resident I am shocked and basically royally pissed off that the people involved in the cold blooded assassination of Sister Dorothy Stang have been set free.
Dorothy Stang was a missionary working in the north of Brazil. She was murdered in cold blood by a bunch of cowards that didn't like the fact that she was standing up for the rights of the locals and less fortunate.
All I can say to the family and friends of Dorothy Stang is that I am sorry. Truly and deeply sorry. I am ashamed of the justice system in Brazil.
Vitalmiro Bastos Mourad. Remember this name. He is the coward that put out the contract on Dorothy Stangs life. He is now a free man.
Shame on the justice system of Brazil..........

An Open Letter to George Bush

Well, George Bush, you have single handedly destroyed the US economy. In the 8 longggggggggg years that you have been at the helm of the USA, (thank you Chad and Jeb)you have managed to start a war against an enemy...THAT YOU CAN"T EVEN FIND!!! using the pretext of weapons of mass destruction, THAT NEVER EXISTED, scaring the US population to believe Iraq's terrorism threat, THAT WAS EXAGGERATED.
The price of houses has plunged, the jobless rates have skyrocketed, the sub prime scandal has wiped out Bear Sterns, and much to the glibness of your Houston buddies, the price of oil has gone over $100 a barrel..Hello Haliburton and your hunting buddy Dick Cheney....NEVER MIND THE FACT THAT OVER 5000 SOLDIERS HAVE LOST THEIR LIVES TO FEED YOUR INSACIABLE APPETITE FOR PETROL.
I have to ask, how can you sleep at night?