Maceio

We´ve just spent the last three days living the Brazilian dream in Maceio. This basically involved, lying on the beach and swimming in emerald waters all day, playing football in the early evening while the sunset hung in the sky, then feasting on all you can eat bbq and dancing the samba until the early hours.

Finally, we managed to realise our goal of playing a proper game with the locals. Every night on the beach, teams of 5 or 6 would take their own mini-goals down to the shore and play until the light was completely gone.


Watching for a while we were a little in awe of some of the crazy skills on display, but playing in the games was a different story. Doug and I managed to hold our own, even earning the occasional cry of Beleza! (Beautiful!) when beating a couple of men. Unfortunately, since we were always on opposing teams, we couldn´t yet achieve our dream of beating the Brazilians at their own game.

Over the 3 days we also noticed another trend. While most of the players here had incredible individual talent, their understanding of the team game was sorely lacking. It becomes a little frustrating when your team mates try and beat everyman on the pitch to score a wonder goal every time they get the ball. This was most evident in the younger players in the game.

After chatting with the friendly owner of the local internet cafe, we discovered that the football infrastructure in the poorer North-East of Brazil wasn´t as good as that of their wealthier cousins down South. As a result, while kids were able to develop flair and ball-skills on the beach, this wasn´t consolidated by tactical knowledge and team work that players need to really make it as professionals. Perhaps this goes some way to explaining why the teams in the North of Brazil have been less successful.

The Season Finale

In order to know exactly what was going on in all the vital last day fixtures, we decided to have a chilled afternoon watching the games on TV with a few beers.

I was secretly hoping that Internacional would win after learning about all the match fixing scandals that ended up with Corinthians replaying 2 games they´d lost and gaining another 4 points, meaning they technically should have been one point behind Internacional at the start of play.

As it turned out, with Coritiba taking an early lead against Internacional there was little drama to be had. Corinthians won the title despite their 3-2 loss at Goias, Inter finished second and Coritiba went down. Indeed, the only excitement of the afternoon was that Romario scored 2 penalties to make him the league´s leading goalscorer.

To cheer ourselves up, we rounded up some folk in the hostel and headed down to floodlit Barra beach for a game of beach soccer. England v an International team comprising a Mexican, an Italian and a Spaniard. With the rain pouring down, and the pitch being partially submerged by waves every couple of minutes, conditions were not ideal and we conceded 2 quick goals. A Doug thunderbolt off the post looked to have put us back in it, before we fell to another 2 goals. The tough Italian defence was proving difficult to beat and the pitch was getting worse with play.

However, as the tide started to come in, we realised that the waves were smoothing out one side of the pitch, and by timing our attacks correctly we could race down the line without obstruction. Our team-mate Josh scored a classic solo goal, then he and I completed a neat one-two before I megged the keeper for 4-3. Finally, from a corner, Josh smashed a Tony Yeboah-esque volley into the roof of the goal from my knock down. 4-4.



With everyone pretty knackered, we called next-goal-wins, and after a period of frantic play, Doug poked the ball through to me to score the winner. Goooool!!

Ecstatic at our first win on foreign soil (well, sand) we resolved that next time we had to take on the ultimate challenge, the Brazilians!