Game Time!

Me, Cristina Cowley, and Brady Squires

Putting on a soccer jersey is always something special. It's like putting on a super hero costume with a bit of religious zeal involved. There is something magical about walking to the stadium surrounded by people wearing the same logo, same colors and wanting the same thing. The scream that everyone joins in when you (not the team, you)score is something you can't describe, but something you have to experience.
Today I went to my first soccer game in Brazil and it was amazing. The team we went to watch is called Sport and they are from here in Recife. The other team was Atletico-MG from Minas Gerias. Sport is right in the middle of the pack while Atletico-MG is the leader. Atletico-MG won 4x1, but the first half ended at 1x1 and it was really intense. Sport scored first and it went nuts! Banners, cheers and everyone jumping up and down. It was very interesting to see the differences between Brazilian style tactics to what I usually see watching MLS or European style soccer. The counter attack was the name of the game and it was interesting to watch how the game was a lot more fluid than the build up attack. The ball handling was amazing and many times when I thought the player should pass, he just took it in himself.

To describe and understand part of my experience we'll have to return to earlier in the day. As our last field trip in Recife (we head out to Salvador on Monday) we went to the Museum of the Man of the Northeast. It was a very interesting museum to show how complex the Northeast is by highlighting historical influences such as the Portuguese, Dutch, Native Americans and Africans along with current driving influences such as religion and economic/educational differences. I thought it was interesting that by taking a cross section of the what the Northeast is and how it has become so was something that seemed simple but it is really complicated and multi-leveled.In an earlier blog I mentioned that whenever I feel that I understand Brazil there is always another mask, another layer.

Back to soccer. So we went and bought our tickets and went to go eat. After we ate we headed back to the stadium. One thing that I learned about Brazilian stadiums (and probably most foreign stadiums) is that security is much more important than fan accessibility. Each area is separated from the other by fences and police lines so it felt like there were four stadiums,each based on ticket price. Because we bought cheaper tickets we had a specific entrance we needed to go enter through. Because we didn't quite understand this and because of poor directions we ended up going through security three times before we got through our right gate. Security isn't quite what we think of at professional sports in the United States. There were riot police in full gear checking people, confiscating anything that could be a weapon or thrown. When we tried to pass through the ticket gates for the higher end tickets the police just looked us up and down, but when we went through our gate (the 'poor' person section) they had the guys pull up their shirts to make sure we didn't have anything concealed.

I'm not saying this to show how MLS stadiums are a much enjoyable experience, but to highlight how the lessons I learned about in the museum were being shown in real life. The differences socially and economically are very real and alive. Even soccer itself, an English game introduced to Brazil, has become 'Brazilianized' to the point that Brazilians differentiate between American Football and 'Brazilian Football'. What appears to a simple experience, watching a global game, turned out to be a lesson in culture and the effects of history and society.