Curmudgeonly feats of observation

For the first time in a long time, I sat down to watch some football on a Sunday afternoon, Vasco x Flamengo. I have gradually distanced myself from both Vasco and football after the death of a youth footballer at a Vasco training ground in 2012 and from Brazilian football in particular because it is so irresolutely corrupt that it´s hard to enjoy. There is also the really low quality of the games, meaningless competitions and insanely high ticket prices to go to stadiums where the threat of police violence is on a par with the lack of institutional concern for the paying fan. Watching games on tv forces one to listen to the kind of lowest common denominator commentary that actively kills brain cells and corrodes whatever capacity for tactical analysis that I once had. In short, the more I have come to know about and experience Brazilian football the less I care. This is a profoundly difficult existential condition and one that I thought I could rectify on a Sunday afternoon on the couch, watching one of the world´s famous clássicos.

The game was at the Xaracanã and was played at a breakneck pace. The Brazilian championship used to be much slower, but now the ball pings around the midfield randomly until someone gets control for long enough to get hacked down. There is no space left on Brazilian football pitches. In this latest deform the Maracanã playing area was reduced by 16%. Once of monumental proportions, the Maracanã´s pitch would only be the 8^th biggest pitch in England. Not incidentally, the field size reduction was mirrored by a 16% capacity reduction (89,000 to 76,525). Not that it matters: there were only 13,000 paying customers in a metropolitan area of 13 million on a Sunday afternoon. Those present were treated to a very emotional game that had a very little technical or tactical quality, but generated some hugely troubling moments during and after.

In the first half, Vasco´s octogenarian signing Douglas curled a lovely free kick that bounced off the underside of the bar and into the goal and then out again. The linesman, trained and paid to stand on the line to see that ball enter, didn´t see it and the goal wasn´t given. Fine, people make mistakes, the game continues. A bit later, Vasco scores, one nil. A few minutes after, Flamengo´s Elano curls a lovely free kick that could have entered the goal or not, but this time the goal was given by the linesman. One one at half time. This was not the correct score, but whatever, these things happen in football. The major problem was the violence with which the Vasco players took up the issue with the six man referee crew. There was so much pushing and shoving and yelling and real, vibrant anger that the Military Police rushed in to protect the refs. This was no surprise to anyone. Yelling and screaming and threatening are normal ways of dealing with things one does not like. Of course it is not just Vasco that does this, but it should be hugely embarrassing behavior for professional athletes to engage in. But in a country where UFC / MMA is the fastest growing sport, what does one expect?

The day after the non-event, in a tournament that means almost nothing, the referee (who teaches physical education in the public school system) is receiving death threats, has had his children´s names and photos published on fayce, his address revealed and is having his second job limited. The violence of Brazilian society appears to be growing every day and is taking its worst toll on the most vulnerable people. This referee can be made fun of, can be put into a lesser division, can have his eyesight examined, but death threats? He´s a working class public school teacher, not a mensalero!  If Vasco hadn´t lost the game through their own lack of tactical nous would there have been as much recrimination from the supposed Vasco fans? Is a person´s life and well-being really worth points in the Campeonato Carioca? The CBF hasn´t offered to keep the goal line technology installed for the Confederations Cup and FIFA doesn´t have much interest in putting chips in footballs, so the threats to human life for not seeing what should have been seen will continue.

Today, February 18, may be a turning point in Brazilian history. We will find out if the Curitiba World Cup stadium has the chance of being ready (my guess is that the hassle of reorganization will overcome construction delays). We will also likely find out the extent of the damage of the fire at the Cuiabá stadium. The former we can attribute to a lack of managerial capacity on the part of Atlético Paranaense. The latter story is more sinister as it may be the case that the construction firm, the World Cup secretariat of Matto Grosso state and a few other officials, knew of but did not publish a report that a fire set by a disgruntled employee in October had caused structural damage to one of the stands. The official report, obtained by Brian Winter of Reuters last week, claims that there was extensive structural damage to the supporting pillars.  The contractor and government officials deny this. One can imagine the scenario: big fire, massive damage, tight deadline. The organizers don´t want to admit that the damage is more than they could repair and even though the lives of 10,000 people in the stands might be at risk, the risk of not having the Cup would be even greater, so let´s just pretend that report doesn´t exist. This is the kind of violence that eats at the core of Brazilian society. If it is indeed true that this report was buried so that capitalist expediency could again take precedence over human life, it is then fair to assume that this is not an isolated incident in Brazil´s World Cup preparations.

Dengue, Dudu, Dirceu

Now a UNESCO heritage site but always projected as a  landscape
 frontier for capital accumulation

Still believing the Brazil hype? I´ll just touch on three issues in this post, and do not want to be a haranguing voice of despair but until there is good evidence that urban conditions are being materially improved by mega-events or that a meaningful social change towards a more just society is evident, I´ll continue to point out the gaping holes in the gold-framed 17^th century landscape painting hung on Brazil´s front door.

 Dengue is still a major problem in Brazil, particularly in 6 of the World Cup host cities (doubling of deaths since 2010 and 217,885 declared cases in Brazil in 2013). Dengue is not really that hard to eliminate if there is sufficient investment in sanitation and a focuses public education program to eliminate stagnant pools of fetid water. The chances of getting dengue are still pretty slim, unless you are living in a poor area of town or in low lying areas, or at a job site…

For the World Cup there is a thing called the Matrix of Responsibilities that each city agrees to as part of its host city contract. In Rio, for instance, the Matrix includes  the Maracanã and the Transcarioca. Of course, the opportunity to include pet projects in all of this in order to “maximize” (read: make as much money as possible) the benefit of the mega-event is irresistible. In some cases, such as Brasilia, none of the urban mobility projects made it off paper and have since been eliminated from the matrix. In Cuiabá, all of the urban mobility projects began on the same day, immobilizing the city for years. Not even Neo could get to work on time in Cuiabá.  In Rio, the re-organization of transport lines in order to make more room for cars has made an impossibly bad system even worse. The mayor first asked for residents to be patient and now has told them to leave work early. Some have suggested that he take his own advice. I wonder how this kind of brutal, arrogant indifference is measured by IBM´s smart city machines. Want to find out the best place to get into gridlock? The new Iphone 5s will cost R$3,600 in Brazil and the promised G4 network likely won´t work.

At least there has been some movement towards completing prison sentences for the corrupt operators of the PT´s monthly kickback scheme. Of course, nothing will stick to the former president even though his former chief of staff and the majority of the PT´s inner circle have now been dragged off to prison. Of course it is good that these convicted criminals have to submit to the law of the land (even though prisons in and of themselves are good for no one). This may indicate that something has indeed shifted positively in the Brazilian justice system.

We know that Brazil already has the most expensive football tickets in the world (relative to minimum wage), but what C.R. Flamengo has done to their fans is beyond the pale. After reaching the final of the Copa do Brasil, the cheapest tickets for the final at the Xaracanã were set at R$250. Minimum wage in Brazil, R$690 a month. A judge intervened and set the cheapest tickets at R$120. The Brazilian clubs are run by amateurs who are articulated politically with a closed and cloistered national football federation that is mirrored by a 2014 Organizing Committee that has no information about its organizing structure and that is trying desperately to convince Brazilians that the World Cup is going to be the best ever. Can we stop with the charade that football tournaments are adequate tools for urban and social development? Mesmo sendo um sapo tamanho cristo redentor, stopping the bombast would make the transfer of wealth program that is the World Cup a little easier to swallow. 

Minha Preciosa / My Precious

When the Olympic Flag arrived in Rio de Janeiro, the mayor posed for cameras with a coy, obsequious smile as he stroked the wooden box which housed the flag. As he caressed the source of all earthly power, he touched the flag (made of Korean Silk!) with his bare hands: a violation of Olympic protocol equivalent to showing the soles of one’s feet to the King of Siam. The Lords were not happy. In the week following the arrival of the Olympic flag in Rio, the twenty first century equivalent of Cortez claiming Mexico for Spain, the mayor has triumphantly brought this sacred icon of the European aristocracy to Brasília (for the Queen of the Planalto), the Complexo do Alemão (occupied by the Brazilian military and symbolic center of power for traficantes), Realengo (the center of military power in Rio), the Palácio da Cidade (center of non-ecclesiastic power), and to Cristo Redentor (symbol of celestial and economic power). Now that we’ve all had the flag waved in our faces and are duly conquered we can send it to the cleaners to remove the fingerprints. Only if one is a Brazilian journalist working for a major outlet could one not notice the parallels between the way the government slobbers and slithers after the flag and the role of the Olympics in consolidating symbolic, political, social, economic and urban power. We are living in a city governed by Gollum! Five rings to rule them all!!!!

Three signs that all is not well under the developmentalist, consumerist regime that counts as public policy in Brazil: the grocery store around the corner from my apartment was assaulted at 6am Sunday morning. Upset that the manager didn’t have the code to the safe, the two assailants put something that “had the appearance of a grenade” in the mouth of the manager and kicked him in the face. Really? Flamengo is a middle and upper-middle class neighborhood in the center of town. Perhaps we should require that everyone wear five rings to work? The assailants escaped out the back of the store and the supermarket opened for business as usual at 11am.

Sunday brought Vasco x Flamengo to the Engenhão. On the way to the stadium a bus full of Flamengo supporters from Resende stopped at a gas station, were put into a rage after seeing some Vasco fans and started to break everything in sight. They then chased down, stabbed, shot and killed 30 year old Diego Matins Leal, who wasn’t wearing a Vasco shirt. 57 people were arrested. As an aside, there were only 19,469 people at the game and only 15,459 of them paid to get in, meaning that 21% of fans entered for free. The paying fans forked over an average of R$26 per ticket for gate receipts of R$403,835. Those who aren’t entitled to half-price tickets paid between R$30 and R$60, subsidizing everyone else. Between the latent, bubbling violence of the torcidas organizadas, the militarization of stadium space that does nothing to diminish the violence but treats everyone as a potential criminal, the high cost of tickets, the difficulty of access and the terrible Engenhão stadium (which I want to say, again, is no longer called Estádio Olímpico João Havelange, but Stadium Rio -  a fact continuously ignored by the media here) – is it any wonder that the biggest rivalry in Rio can only get half the average attendance of MLS's Seattle Sounders?

And to continue what has been a very depressing post…In the last week two kids have been killed by Rio’s security forces. One, a 15 year old male, was killed outside his home by BOPE as he bent down to pick up the keys that his mom had thrown from the upstairs window. Shot three times, his mother was forced to clean her son’s blood off the doorstep. Yesterday, a four year old girl was killed by Military Police during a raid. In the USA, people make tragic films about these events. In Rio, this is everyday news and a sign that not all is well. 

It would appear that the metrics of security for Rio de Janeiro are indeed linked to the ability of Zona Sul residents and visitors to walk around with an iphone on their way to get some frozen yogurt. For those who live outside the Olympic City, there are daily, deadly reminders that NOTHING FUNDAMENTAL HAS CHANGED. The appearance of new buildings, shopping malls, museums, ageing football stars and the occasional international celebrity only mean that there’s a chance for someone to make money, not that there’s any kind of meaningful wealth redistribution, or shift in paradigm. To the contrary, the wholesale capitulation of the Worker’s Party to private industry has stuffed private hands even further into public pockets.  Three absurd deaths in three days, a supermarket manager getting kicked in the face with a grenade stuffed in his mouth, endemic and systemic corruption, phantasmagoric mega-projects, the decline of popular culture and fawning fealty to a posse of high-handed moralists: the narcotic power of the five rings hides the violence from plain sight.

The sick,sad and tragic case of Bruno Souza

For those of you outside of Brazil, you might not have heard about the Flamengo goalie who after captaining his side to the Brazilian championship in 2009 was arrested under suspicion of having his ex-lover murdered. Jeremy Schapp and the E:60 team from the USA came to Brazil earlier in the year to investigate the case and produced this video, which aired globally two weeks ago (but not in Brazil or Latin America).


Bloodline - E:60 - Bruno from Evolve IMG Films Ltd. on Vimeo.


As part of some ongoing discussions that the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores has had with Marcelo Freixo, there are legal initiatives underway to make Brazil's football clubs responsible for educating their players. Currently there is no media training, no financial advice, no recompense for youth players who become injured. The clubs are basically employing a feudal labor system to generate profits, which are then duly pocketed (generally speaking) by amateurish club directors. The four big Rio teams are the four most indebtted clubs in Brazil. This is not too different from the fake amateurism of the NCAA or from the youth academies that European teams have set up in West Africa.

Was the Bruno case preventable? Should Flamengo have intervened? Does the structure of Brazilian football and their labor practices contribute to this kind of tragedy? Yes. Yes. Yes.

Vasco da Gama (1) x Flamengo (2), Campeonato Carioca 2011

With all of the writing about mega-events I rarely take the opportunity to write about football, which is more than a passing interest.

Contrary to produced and received wisdom, the biggest fixture of the Rio football calendar is not Flamengo x Fluminense (Fla x Flu) but rather Vasco da Gama x Flamengo. Known as the “Classico das milhões” (the derby of millions) Vasco x Fla happens four times a year and in the ‘classic  years’ of Rio’s football drew eight of the twenty largest crowds in Brazilian history. 

Vasco entered yesterday’s game having lost their first three games of the Campeonato Carioca. Flamengo had won all of theirs. Two teams going in opposite directions.  Vasco fired its coach who had been sabotaged by the two star players, Carlos Alberto and Felipe. This sabotage took the form of intentionally losing games, which is a pretty sinister thing. There is also speculation that the players are trying to end the presidency of Roberto Dinamite, who scored 700 goals for Vasco as a player. Are Dinamite’s political rivals paying players to lose games so that he is weakened come election time? Whatever is going on, Vasco is totally lost at sea and entered the day at the bottom of the table with no coach, no captain, no confidence, one goal and zero points from three games. Uma situação cumplicada.

Flamengo just signed Ronaldinho Gaúcho and appears to be rolling in cash. Even though they just escaped relegation in 2010 after winning the league in 2009, they looked comfortable in their first three games. In the lead up to the game the platitudes and clichés were flying, as usual – “Vasco sempre é um rival cumplicado” “Clássico é Classico, não dá para prever”, etc.

It’s high summer in Rio. Game time temperature at the stadium was 38°C, and probably much, much hotter on the field. Contrary to the ‘classic’ years, there were only 15,000 people in attendance. The reasons for the radical drop in attendance are too complicated to explain succinctly.  The broadcast team for PFC2 (owned of course by OGlobo) continually referred to the Fechadão by its original name, Estádio Olímpico João Havelange. That’s not the name anymore. It was changed to Stadium Rio last year in an empty appeal to internationalize this sad spaceship of a sporting venue.

The expectation was that Vasco were going to lose, badly. When David hit the first goal, there was no surprise, almost a relief that the anticipated had arrived. When Thiago Neves took advantage of a lovely through ball aided by some lazy defending and chipped over Fernando Prass just before half-time, it was basically over.

Contrary to expectations, Vasco did not lie down and die in the second half, but upped the intensity of the game once substitutions were made. One of the problems I have with following Brazilian football really closely is that the players are never around for long enough to become familiar with them. I would like to be able to report about how the insertion of Misael for Allan and Márcio Careca for Ramon changed things for Vasco, but I can only say that they did, and from the 20^th minute of the second half on, Vasco were the better team.

One of the delightful things about watching games in Brazil is also one of the most frustrating. The commentators don’t tend to provide much depth to the game, but come up with some gems once in a while. They are also biased. For instance, instead of saying that Vasco had improved and were stringing passes together and looking good, the commentator (whose name I forget) said: Flamengo perdeu o meiocampo. Flamengo lost the midfield. Porra! Porque não poderia ter dito que Vasco melhorou? A small thing, but important.

The gems were the following:

Regarding one of Vasco's players: Ele é um jogador de pequissimos recursos. He is a player with limited resources. A damning condemnation of a professional footballer.

Regarding the lack of substitutions at half time: Flamengo não mexeu porque não precisa, Vasco porque não tem noção. Flamengo didn’t make any changes because they don’t have to, Vasco because they don’t have a clue.

After melhorando muito seu desempenho em campo, Vasco marcou e quase virou o jogo. A draw would have been lovely and just, but it did not come and Vasco have written a new page in their long history. They have never lost four games to start the Campeonato Carioca. This is the worst start ever. And while it is good and interesting to be living through a historical moment, it’s not exactly a happy time to be a Vascaino in a city where your major rivals have won all of their games.

There were numerous encouraging signs from Vasco in the second half yesterday. They’ve got some talent and were able to cut through Flamengo with some ease as the second half wore on. There are some major defensive lapses, particularly on the wings and there isn’t much hope that Carols Alberto and Felipe are going to rejoin the team after being “afastados” be Roberto Dinamite. Vasco has no coach and whoever decides to take up the task is going to be entering a caldron of political intrigue, a team without cohesion, and a relegation battle to fight. Then comes the Brasilieirão.

Flamengo has booked their place in the semi-final of the Taça Guanabara where they will meet the loser of Fluminense x Botafogo this weekend. 

Maracanã robbed! Botafogo Wins Carioca, the odyssey begins

The office of TWA, the company responsible for selling tickets to the Maracanã was robbed on Saturday, complicating ticket sales for the final game of the Taça Rio between Botafogo and Flamengo (won by O Glorioso). How is it that an office housed within the stadium itself, guarded by a special Stadium Police Force (GEPE) and a private security firm, behind 3 meter gates can get robbed the night before the final game of the championship? Strange indeed. 


Other robberies probably took place during the game as the law requiring that all game receipts be made public within 24 hours has been ignored by FERJ. The only information regarding attendance and money is that there were 50,303 paying spectators that generated R$ 1,677,565, for an average ticket price of R$33.34 - far above the R$19,00 average for the semi-finals. This is obviously incomplete information as the Vasco x Flamengo game had more than 6,000 free tickets issued. The entierty of the receipts for the Campeonato Carioca can be found here - with the glaring exception of yesterday's final. Curious. (Note - the receipts were posted on Tuesday 20/04)


With the end of the Carioca, we may actually see the beginning of the construction project for the 2014 World Cup, but don't hold your breath as there don't appear to be any architects, engineers, or anyone at all contracted to carry off the R$ 600,000,000 reforms. 

Maracanã, furos, Libertadores, chuva, e tal

This is the last of the eight holes dug around the Maracanã to test the sub soil for stability. Each of the eight went to a depth of 25 meters. The verdict from the foreman: good sub-soil. Now the waiting game begins - no one knows what the next step in the construction process will be. Perhaps a drainage system?


The state govenor "liberated" the  Maracanã  for the Copa Libertadores match betwen Flamengo and Universidad do Chile, scheduling the game for 16:00 hrs on a Thursday afternoon. This seems an odd time to hold a game in a region of the city that was so recently paralized by flooding, as the end of the game would nicely co-encide with the evening rush hour. Additionally, the ticketing mechanisms for the stadium continue to operate at maximum inefficiency. When I approached a ticket booth earlier in the day, I was told that they weren't selling tickets. Which begs a series of questions not the least of which being, why open the booth if you're not going to sell anything? Unfortunately for these fans, one of the few things to start on time in Brazil is a football match. 

The Maracanã had flooded badly in the days before the game (oglobo foto) and the play reflected the horrible state of the pitch. I went to the game with Mike Raco who was visiting from King's College London who said that going to the Maracanã had always been a dream of his - and the experience did not dissapoint. Despite all of the problems, floodings, delays, incompetent management, and (on this day) poor level of play - the stadium continues to evoke wonder. The 2014 project will ruin much of this beauty, shutting out the sky - so look now people, as this scene is going to disappear very soon. 

I can't say I was disappointed when U. Chile equalized in the 91st minute as one doesn't have to walk far in this city to hear a Flamenguista going on and on about glories both invented and real. It's always special to go to the Maracanã, even when it's flooded and in order to get to the Metro you have to jump over a railing in order to keep your feet dry. 

Campeonato Carioca

Today’s lesson in the geography of the obvious deals with the phenomenon of state soccer tournaments in Brazil. Each of the 26 Brazilian states holds multi-division tournaments between January and April, with the winner of the first division tournament gaining direct qualification for the Copa do Brasil (Brazil’s version of the FA Cup or US Open Cup). It is only after the end of the state tournaments that the four divisions of the Brazilian National Championship begin.

Why the state tournaments endure as a central feature of the Brazilian football calendar is something that I talk about in chapter two of Temples of the Earthbound Gods. The state tournaments are remnants of an era of the relative geographic isolation of Brazilian urban centers. Brazil is the same size as the continental United States, but the lack of efficient road, rail, and air transportation between the coastal cities and the interior has the effect of increasing geographic distance (as long as we consider time and space to be mutually constitutive). Because it was prohibitively expensive and time consuming to travel between Brazil’s major urban centers for most of the 20^th century, state tournaments made much more sense than a national tournament. Even today, the lower divisions of Brazilian football are organized on a regional basis because it is simply not possible for smaller teams to afford weekly air travel.

The advent of the Brazilian national championship (Brasilerão) in 1971 was as much a political project as a sporting one: the military government wanted a way to integrate the country through the popularity of football, using the Selecão’s third World Cup victory in 1970 to obtain political ends. That the Brasilerão changed its rules 31 times between 1971 and 2003 didn’t endear it to the general population and the state tournaments continued to hold more cultural importance for fans well into the 1990s.

The traditional state powers from the main urban centers were able to use the Brasilerão and television contracts to get bigger, while the teams that only competed in the state tournaments became relatively smaller, sending their best players up the food chain. So the situation we have today in Rio de Janeiro is that no team outside of the big four (Vasco, Botafogo, Fluminese, Flamengo) has won a state title since 1966, and only Americano, Volta Redonda and Madureira have managed to finish second in the last 40 years. Yesterday, Olaria managed to beat Vasco for the first time since 1971. This is front page news in Rio.

The state tournaments have turned into a training ground for the bigger clubs throughout Brazil. Attendances are abysmal, games are lopsided, and the influence of the OGlobo network on game times ensures that this situation will continue as mid week games can only begin after the novelas have ended at 10pm. Worse, the Rio State Football Federation can’t even make the Maracanã ticketing system work. They no longer sell tickets on the day of the game, and the stadium can no longer host clasicos because no one will take responsibility for managing the turnstiles. It’s a joke. The recent developments have highlighted the staggering amount of institutional change that is going to be necessary before Brazil is ready to host the World Cup in 2014.

After talking with Juca Kufuri about the insane state of affairs in Brazilan football, he suggested that the CBF and its corrupt puppet master Ricardo Teixeira intentionally keep Brazilian football in a state of chaos in order to valorize the Brazilian National Team at the expense of the clubs. If you go to any football store in the world, you will find jerseys of club and national teams from England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Argentina. You will rarely if ever see a Brazilian club team jersey, but will always be able to find the CBF jersey. This is obvious but not accidental. The Brazilian football calendar is grossly out of synch with the International calendar, allowing European teams to poach Brazilian players in the middle of the Campeonato Brasileiro, further weakening the club game in Brazil.

Tonight there is a classico between Flamengo and Botafogo at the Fechadão. There won’t be many people in the stands, because the stadium accesses are terrible and potentially dangerous when two rival torcidas are arriving via the same transportation lines at the same time. The lack of planning on the part of the state and national federations is aggravated by the lack of concern shown by the city government and the absurd influence of the major television networks. All of these factors, plus the increasingly rapid decline of the smaller teams relative to the big teams in Rio has made for one of the worst Cariocas in recent memory – a situation produced by history, geography, politics, and economics that can only be relieved by the raw potential of football to transform the mundane into sublime.

Big Football Sunday in Rio de Janeiro

This is the most important weekend of football in Rio de Janeiro in many, many years.

Rio de Janeiro has many dozens of professional teams, but four major clubs: Botafogo, Fluminese, Flamengo and Vasco da Gama. This is the final weekend of the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, or Brasileirão.

Botafogo is in the relegation zone, playing at home against Palmeiras (São Paulo). If Botafogo wins, they escape relegation. If they lose, they go down to the second division for the second time in five years. In addition to being the team with the most draws (14) they are widely perceived to be the team most harmed by bad luck, poor referring, and general levels of incompetence on the part of club management (despite receiving a massive subsidy from the city for their stadium contract). Palmeiras is three points off the title chase and win might give them the title if other results go their way. They will come with everything they have especially since they were leading the competition by six points six weeks ago, have spent hundreds of millions on transfers, and have very little to show for it.

Three months ago, the odds of Fluminese falling to the second division were 97%. Since the return of their talismanic striker Fred, they have won ten league games on the trot while getting to the final of the Copa SulAmericana. Flu sit one point ahead of both Coritiba and Botafogo and a draw will be enough to keep them in the Brasilieirão. Fluminese plays Coritba for the right to stay in the first division. After losing a heartbreaking final to LDU of Ecuador on Wednesday night they might not have the spirit to stay afloat. If they fall, Rio’s oldest club might not return to the first division for some time.

15	Fluminense	45	37	11	12	14	48	55	-7
16	Coritiba	44	37	12	8	17	47	59	-12
17	Botafogo	44	37	10	14	13	50	57	-7
18	Santo André	41	37	11	8	18	45	57	-12
19	Náutico	38	37	10	8	19	48	70	-22
20	Sport	31	37	7	10	20	48	67	-19

Flamengo are the unlikely story of the 2009 season. In August, they sat in 12^th place with not much hope of reaching a continental competition. Since the inclusion of the 37 year old Dejan Petkovic in the starting lineup, week in week out, Flamengo have been the best team in Brazil. Petkovic has been brilliant, combining with ‘O Imperiador’ Adriano and Ze Roberto for some memorable goals. Flamengo idol turned manager Andrade has pulled all the right strings and is about to bring a massive party to the Maracanã.

Flamengo is in first place by two points chased by Internacional of Porto Alegre, Palmeiras and São Paulo. If Inter win and Flamengo lose, Inter will be champion. Problem for Inter: Flamengo is playing Grêmio of Porto Alegre, their arch-rival. Last week the fans of Grêmio began to chant ‘entrega’ to their team, meaning: lose the game intentionally, giving the title to Flamengo so Inter won’t win. It appears that this is going to happen and that a Flamenguista title is a fait accompli.

P	Equipes	PTS	J	V	E	D	GP	GC	S
1	Flamengo	64	37	18	10	9	56	43	13
2	Internacional	62	37	18	8	11	61	43	18
3	Palmeiras	62	37	17	11	9	57	43	14
4	São Paulo	62	37	17	11	9	53	42	11

Rio’s soccer fans have not had much to cheer about in recent years. In recent years, Fluminese fell as far as the third division, Botafogo was relegated in 2004, and Vasco was relegated in 2008. Flamengo, with the largest fan base in Brazil (if not the world) is disputing the title for the first time in 17 years. A Rio team has never won the championship in the era of pontas corridas (running table of points). This in itself speaks volumes about the management of football in this city.

The seasons of Flu and Fogo will be a success if they aren’t relegated. Vasco was champion of the second division and will be retuning to top flight football in 2010. Flamengo is probably going to waltz into the championship because Gremio is going to abria as pernas (as they say) so that their cross-town rivals have no chance at the title. One victory, two escapes?

It’s going to be a big futebol Sunday in Rio.