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Published: December 31st 2008
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This blog should be another series of photos showing a South American country as a hot bed of football. I know this is a difficult concept to visualise after those shots of an overflowing Estadio Centenario, but at least the games went ahead as planned. A lesson to those planning a Rio footballing experience - give yourself options. Flamengo would surely play a big home at the Maracana, wouldn’t they? Well not necessarily, in a country that has been known to switch a kick off so as not to clash with their version of East Enders. Flamengo switched their game ……. and played it in the jungle city of Manaus to get a crowd ….. the sort of stunt that Juventus would pull in Italy for a meaningless Champions League game if they could persuade UEFA it would be a good idea. This minor detail left us a couple of thousand miles adrift of the game. Flamengo got their crowd anyway, which was more than the other games played in the National Championship that weekend which pulled in a combined total that would have left most Conference teams looking disappointed. The football spectator experience - Brazilian style - was therefore restricted
Paraty
Capela da Santa Rita to an external view of the crumbling hulk that is the Maracana and a passing glimpse of Fluminense’s tiny home, the 8,000 capacity Estadio Laranjeiras.
In terms of geographical setting, Rio is quite possibly in the top 3 in the world …… the other two in our humble opinion would be Cape Town and Sydney. However life on the ground is more akin to the former than the latter, as those that “have” and those that “have not” battle for superiority of the streets. What surprised us most was the proximity that the two groups seem prepared to live. We stayed in Ipanema, where as with most seaside suburbs expensive apartments mingle with the hillside shacks. Rio came with plenty of health warnings - don’t walk here, don’t carry a camera, take nothing to the beach and the like. There seemed to be no distinction between safe and not safe. Life didn’t seem so complicated in Argentina, Uruguay or Chile. We met plenty of Americans, who used to have a video camera! I recall trying to buy a drink and being directed to a cage in the corner from where cash was exchanged for a ticket, which was then
Rio de Janeiro
The statue of Christ the Redeemer on a rather cloudy Corcovado Mountain exchanged at the bar for the said drink. We sat on the beach at Ipanema - no sign of “The Girl”, but plenty of security guards pursuing street kids through the herds of people grouped together on the sand. A herd is an unusual term for a group of people, but on the beaches there does seem to be a stick together for safety herd mentality. It might be better now, it might be worse - at that time we hadn’t seen what South Africa had to throw at you yet and it was clearly going to take longer than we had to get used to life in Rio.
We ventured to a shopping centre in Leblon. After the experiences in a bar, would shops accept cash or would we have to exchange cash for a ticket and then exchange that for goods? It didn’t happen, but it was very expensive. The Corcovado Mountain was shrouded in fog and our view of life in Rio remains similarly mysterious.
The contrasts of life were more extreme as we ventured out to the extremities of city en route to Paraty a couple of hours south on the coast on the
Ipanema Beach
The Girls from Ipanema huddle together on the sand Bay of Ilha Grande - Porches jostle with horse and carts on the roads and expensive properties mingle with the favella style shacks on the hillsides. Paraty was a sleepy relic of Portuguese colonial buildings - a sort of Brazilian Colonia del Scaremento without the vintage cars. A forgotten gold port from yesteryear, Paraty had been left to it’s own devices as modern life had bypassed it. After the badlands of Rio, the potential for danger was non-existent in Paraty. The danger comes in the form of the tides which flood the streets during a full moon. It was picture book pretty, but perhaps too quiet and we didn’t really appreciate the glorious architecture and it’s charm at the time. We spent our final few days in Brazil in the “safety” of an all inclusive resort with the “haves” of Brazilian society. Do you play football? Yes. Bobby Charlton or Bobby Moore? Bobby Charlton. I figured that would be preferable to having a 40 year old Ronaldinho showboating past me. I picked up the ball about 30 yards from goal - there was pause as they waited for an English ball trick - I put my head down and hammered
it. Total football - the direct version! 1-0 to Bobby Charlton’s team!
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