Frango?

FOOTBALL – MARACAÑA STADIUM

On our last day in Rio we decided to go to a football match at the World´s biggest stadium (the Maracana held close to 200,000 people for Pele´s last game). I had wanted to go to a game the week previously, but that was Vasco de Gama vs. Botafogo - a local derby. This was considered a bad idea, since earlier Liz had read the following about Brazilian football matches in the Lonely Planet: ¨fans are sometimes driven to sheer madness; some detonate smoke bombs, while others launch beer bottles, cups full of urine or dead chickens into the seats below¨. We decided therefore to limit the chance of chicken-on-face and go to the less inflammatory mid-week game.

As it happened we were too busy to make it that night, so we postponed the trip until the following Sunday. The game that day was: FLAMENGO VS FLUMINENSE. A local derby between two of Rio´s biggest rivals! Oh happy day ...

To be sure of getting a ticket we arrived 6 hours before kick off and one hour before the ticket office opened. This turned out to be completely unnecessary as there were close to 50,000 spare tickets for the game but you live and learn eh? Eventually the ticket office opened and, despite some initial language difficulties, I managed to buy a couple of tickets.

As we had no idea of where we were sitting, we decided to ally ourselves with some Flamengo supporters. We chose Flamengo for the following reasons:

Chris: The Flamengo metro stop is close to where we´re staying so that makes them kind of our local team ... even though I have no idea where Fluminense are based.
Liz: Their name´s better and I like their colours.

So, we followed a man carrying a 20ft red flag with a hairy face on it, up and into the stadium. Once inside we still had no idea where we were supposed to be sitting, so we just took the nearest empty seats. Everyone else was doing similar so we were ok. It soon became clear that following our man with the flag was a good shout, as we were surrounded by similar flag bearers, and some samba drummers were warming up just behind us.

It all kicked off about 15 minutes before the game.

Now, I don´t know if all Brazilian football matches are like this, or if it was just the derby atmosphere, but games in England have NOWHERE near the kind of support we witnessed here. You would probably get thrown out of the Emirates for behaving as most of these people did. The crowd were up on their feet, or standing on their seats, clapping, shouting, dancing and signing along to the team chants all throughout the first half, accompanied by the beat of the samba drums. Men with the flags were running up and down the aisles, and occasionally we´d get covered with an enormous canvas flag that spelt out some incomprehensible message of support or abuse to the rest of the stadium. Somewhere or other a game was taking place in the blistering heat. The thermometer outside the stadium read 39 degrees. The first half was goalless but we´d spent most of it watching the crowd.

During the half time break the weather changed dramatically. The skies darkened, the wind picked up, and rain began sheeting down in torrents. The crowd surged to the only part of the stadium that was covered – right at the back of the stands. As we were all huddled there like sheep the thunder and lightning began. This seemed to ignite the crowd, and the samba drums began pounding once more. Soon everyone was jumping up and down shouting at the tops of their voices trying to drown out the thunder, wind and the rain. A group of die-hard fans began marching up and down in front of us in the driving rain, gesturing to their rivals across the stadium.

Because of the conditions, kick off for the 2^nd half was delayed by 30 minutes. It eventually began to an electric atmosphere, and after 5 minutes when some bloke called Kleberson rattled one into the top corner for Flamengo, pandemonium broke loose. Half an hour later, Fluminense had scored 4 for no reply and we sat in dejection with our fellow supporters. It was awful. We soon got over it however, since it made no blind bit of difference to us who´d won, but we thought we´d be sombre in any case out of respect for our adopted team.

Oh, I almost forgot: for the third goal, the one that killed the game, the Fluminense striker ran to the corner flag nearest the Flamengo support and held his arms outstretched in a Jesus Christ pose. He was promptly showered with cups of what looked like beer (but could well have been urine), and also with a limp object that to my eyes looked very poultry-like. Maybe the Lonely Planet was right ...