The Big Game

May 28th, 2007 Posted by Tiff

Sunday is the day of o classico. Neil and I have been like 5 yr olds on Xmas eve all week for this one.Derby game of football in Brazil? Life ambition box ticked!

Sao Paolo (the establishment) vs Palmeiras (the people, os porcos!). Im going for Palmeiras for green & white and Neil goes for the establishment. Parochial Glasgow in the tropics…will we never learn?!

Our guide for the day is the one and only Penguin, the roadie for CSS. You couldn’t make him up.19yrs old he learned English on tour with a rock band and speaks a unique brand of staccato double phrases repeated for emphasis…

‘’no Palmieras, no Palmeiras porcos no no’’

‘’Believe!’’

We head along past rows of colour,the smoke of BBQ’d beef skewers, lots of cheerful riot police and into Morumbi stadium.Disappointingly its not full as Penguin explains

‘’we have a sheeee*t manager, sheeee*t manager’’ ‘’no like, fans not come’’

The atmosphere more than makes up though…the Palmeiras samba band is in full flow boom bara dara boom ba!! The fans bounce up and down and slide sideways at the same time and spend the next 90 mins combining this with insulting their opposite numbers in new and ever more eventful ways. Calling the Palmeiras fans porcos , pigs started off as an insult but they now proudly sing pooooooooooooooooooorcos estamos porcos…

Flares go off, banners that cover the whole section of the ground are held over the heads and the stadium buzzes with a mixture of passion and anxiety.

Meanwhile back at the game, its absolutely awful. No teamwork, horrendous fouls forwards that want to take 1 trillion touches before shooting….RUBBISH!

10/10 for atom and 1/10 for game quality. Best amusement is watching a genteel family of 7 taking turns to insult the referee’s family. Aah, the beautiful game bringing people closer.

‘’eet ees a perfect sheee*t, a perfect sheee*t game ‘’ The Penguin

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