Brazil’s Worst Nightmare

7/9/14

With time to kill before the semifinal, we headed to Pacaembu Stadium to visit the Museu do Futebol. It was a really interesting museum with a unique use of space: built underneath the bleachers of this art deco soccer stadium. [Nick: I had designed a t-shirt for our friends with the Brazilian flag and the blue globe in the center, composed of different Brazilian soccer legends. I didn’t just want to make it of recent stars so I went online and added names of some of Brazil’s greatest players in history. Of course, Filipe knew them all except one: “Penny.” “Who is this Penny; never heard of him?” At the museum, they had an exhibit that had been translated into English and I saw Penny referenced there; turns out Penny was the translation for Tostão, which was the nickname of Eduardo Gonçalves de Andrade who was on Brazil’s 1970 World Cup winning squad. A tostão is an old 10 cent coin; I don’t know why English websites changed it to Penny. They don’t translate Ronaldinho to “Ronny.”] The interactive exhibits were expectedly Brazil-centric but they did a really good job of highlighting soccer around the world with impressive artifacts like Pele’s #10 jersey, cleats and balls from the last century, and a copy of the original (Jules Remit) World Cup trophy (stolen in Brazil in 1983 and never recovered).

Nick and the Zebra

After the museum, we packed into the São Paulo train station and got our first glimpse of the insanity and sheer number of Argentinian fans that had descended on Brazil. Holy crap. It was beyond herding cattle. No doubt, the São Paulo public transportation system had prepared for large crowds and contingencies for keeping such massive numbers of people moving, but it really felt like they were not prepared for this semifinal onslaught. I’m not sure how to describe the sheer number of people there were; everyone corralled into narrower and narrower lanes of traffic through the subway system (why it was organized so poorly, with dozens of cops standing around, I have no idea); everyone pushing and shoving to get just a few inches further. We could only baby step through the crowd, it was that packed, and, being short, it was of course very hard to breathe amongst the thick pack of bodies. It was seriously dangerous with that many people squished together and fighting for space. Fortunately, no fights or accidents occurred but the tenuous situation was made worse by a cloud of pepper spray that we had to walk through (where it came from – cops or the crowd – we have no idea). Hot damn that shit is painful!! I’m glad I’ve never had to take a direct hit from it. A few moments of wracking coughs and my throat was still burning hours later when I went to bed! [Nick: São Paulo was the only place in all our games where I felt the logistics of getting people to the game were poorly prepared. When we got off at the stadium Metro stop, they ushered all of us through two small doors. This became way too tight and was a bit dangerous. Luckily nothing happened, but there was no need for this. Filipe had attended soccer games at this stadium before and they had another exit which, for some reason, they did not open on this occasion.]

SP Train Station

Once outside the train station, the crowd was able to spread out (and breathe) more and we made our way to the stadium. [Nick: We were offered at least $1200 for our seats. Oh and some of the volunteers thought I looked like Kaká again, calling out to his buddy to check me out.] We were assigned the worst seats so far of any game: not just nose bleed section but high up and off to the side in the temporary bleachers they had erected for the games, which were essentially outside the actual stadium. Poor Fe & Filipe were even further “outside” than we were and got stuck in rain. Fortunately, a couple of seats opened up in front of us during halftime and they were able to take cover before the downpour really started. (We’ve definitely lucked out with weather on our trip so far!) [Nick: The stadium was actually incredibly nice, though not fully complete; you can tell they are planning to put TVs everywhere but have not gotten to that yet. The seats we were in were an extension they are going to remove after the Cup so those were a bit less nice.]

Rainy Day

Makeshift bleachers added to stadium

Sadly, the Argentina v. Holland game was rather boring. Another 0-0 match with overtime. It didn’t appear as if either team was playing for a win; it seemed as if they were both just waiting it out (and wasting our time) for the penalty shots. It was a real let down not to see Messi perform up to expectations – no shots on goal and his teammates just couldn’t meet him on his passes. Lame. At least Holland didn’t bring out their penalty specialist goalkeeper like they did vs. Costa Rica. [Nick: This I do not understand. In the Costa Rica game, the Dutch coach saved one replacement to bring in a new goalkeeper during the last minute of the game. This worked, the goalkeeper made a couple of saves and Holland advanced. However, if you do this, what you are saying to your main goalkeeper is that you have no confidence that he can stop a penalty. So in my opinion, if you do this once, you have to do this for all games because you have already undermined your keeper’s confidence. Well, this time the Dutch coach left the regular keeper in, who was unable to stop any penalties and Argentine went through.]

Messi warming up

Messi's free kick

If Argentina had actually lost, who knows what would have happened because the Argentinian fans were INSANE. Many of them never sat down and our seats (remember we were in makeshift bleachers) were bouncing due to their nonstop jumping and cheering. Being excited and celebrating your team is one thing, hooliganism is something else altogether! I’m glad Argentina won the shootout; I want to support Argentina because I want to see Messi do well. But the Argentinian fans are kind of ruining that for me – I definitely see Fe and Filipe’s point in that Brazilians don’t necessarily dislike the Argentinian players; it’s the Argentinian fans that they don’t like. One guy next to us almost started a fight with the two rows behind us and he was barely contained by his wife who was also somewhat aggressively passionate about the game (collapsing into hysterical crying when they won). We felt we narrowly missed a big confrontation there, only to have to rush out of the stands after the game because a fight had started above us and cups (and beer) were raining down the steps. Not to be out done, another fight started in the street (fortunately up the street and away from us) as we were once again herded into a ridiculous and dangerous single file line to get back to the subway. [Nick: Argentinean fans were definitely the most aggressive and prone to violence of any fans we encountered in the World Cup; even the Italians and English seemed subdued. I liked that they chanted for their team a lot, though they had too many derogatory chants about Brazil for my taste (I believe for good sportsmanship you should only chant positives for your team, not negatives for the other team. Or in this case, a country you are not even facing and is graciously hosting you.), but there were a lot of Argentinian fans just itching to find a fight. The Argentinean fan next to us had to be restrained by his wife after he got mad at the Brazilian fans for chanting (they were mocking Argentina’s Maradona) had no right because he was chanting mocking things about Brazil too, so tit-for-tat. And as I went to the bathroom I went past a few Argentinean fans who confronted me saying I was stepping on their stuff which they had on the floor (which I was not). Luckily, ignoring them and just continuing my path worked fine. Of course, the vast majority of Argentinean fans were fine, but they had more bad apples than they should.]

Argentinian fans

Dutch fans

On the bright side, many Brazilians we ran into were still so complimentary about Costa Rica ;o)  We separated from Fe & Filipe, as they headed back to their family and we stayed in the city one more night, binge watching “Orange is the New Black” (they made a reference to the book “Outlander” and I almost lost it!) and living it up in our first full-size hotel bed (no more twin beds pushed together, woo hoo!).