brazil, me and futebol

In Sao Paulo there are four major footbal clubs as far as I understood. In alphabetical order (no preferences implied): Corinthians, Palmeiras, Sao Paulo e Santos. So people here do not choose their football club based on their town, but based on family tradition. Which means that my Court actually doesn't agree on which team is the best one. Felipe is Corinthians-Fan, Cesar belongs to Santos and Ricardo to Palmeiras. Up to Saturday, I considered myself a light fan of Flamengo from Rio just because I've been to one of their games already.

For Ricardo this was just not acceptable, so he tried by any means to convert me to Palmeiras. One of his dearest wishes was to take me to one of their (minor) games, so I could have my own Palmeiras experience to counterbalance the Flamengo one ;-) Perhaps I should add that we went to a minor game because of safety reasons. The "classical" games between the four local teams are much too violent to watch anywhere than on TV.

So I agreed to come to a football game with Ricardo. A little one, Palmeiras vs. Santa Cruz, a team so unsignificant that it wasn't even a question if Palmeiras would win. A safe play to try to win over a new "torcedora" (fan). The day before the "big day", Ricardo surprised me with a Palmeiras T-shirt! Of course without forgetting to warn me to wear something over it when coming to the stadium. Just to avoid being beaten up by someone elses fan... so here you see what is a Palmerias-couple ;-)

And they tried everything to get me into the right mood. T-Shirt, Popcorn, hotdogs, what else could I ask for? Do you see, I am a little sceptical? Palmeiras hasn't been particulary lucky during the last games, so I didn't really believe in Ricardos prediction of three goals for Palmeiras.

And here you see the fans. In Sao Paulo it is forbidden to form official fan-clubs for the games. Of course there are fanclubs (many things are forbidden in Brazil and nobody cares), but they try to keep them out of the games, not allowing anyone with the fanclub-shirts to enter, for example. So this was quite a difference to the game in Rio where most of the fans belonged to the official club, creating a very particular feeling.
Oh, and in the middle of the picture you see one of the popcorn-sellers.

17:56. The game is over. Actually there were 3 goals made by Palmeiras. Only that one entered the wrong goal... so they won "only" 2:1.

Conclusion? I liked the game? I even went to watch the next game on wednesday with Felipe and Ricardo in a bar (Palmeiras started loosing again...). Bit by bit I am even understanding the game, thanks to the constant comments from everyone around. And 45 twice isn't really that long.
And concerning the club affinity, I found some kind of compromise: I am Palmenguista now. A rare mixture between Palmeirense in Sao Paulo and Flamenguista in Rio. Schacka.
(Just a shame that both of them a constantly loosing...)