Rumble in Rio
A quiet day out in Rio
A long, but glorious trip around Argentina and Brazil was coming to an end. I’d seen 14 matches at 14 stadiums, including La Bombonera and Maracana, perhaps the two most iconic football stadiums in the world. At worst, they’re top five.
It was almost time to go home, but I had time for one more game. With none of the bigger clubs in action, it was time to go niche. I had toyed with the idea of going to a Serie D (tier 4) game, before expanding the search radius on Futbology and finding America-RJ vs. Vasco Da Gama in the final of the Rio de Janeiro U20’s Cup. This had to be the one.
It almost didn’t happen. I had sat in the hotel lobby waiting for an Uber for 20 minutes, with multiple drivers cancelling the trip after accepting. While doomscrolling, I came across a post from the Vasco account that revealed the cup final was actually played over two legs, and Vasco were already 4-1 up after the first game. “Ah fuck it, I’ll cancel the Uber and go to a different game” I thought, only for a notification to pop up that my driver was on the way, and would be arriving in two minutes. Looks like I was going after all!
It was a long ride, and after saying “olá” and “Se Ronaldo tivesse se mantido em forma durante toda a sua carreira, o Brasil teria conquistado 7 Copas do Mundo” to the driver, my Portuguese had been pretty much completely used up.
As we made slow progress through the streets, it was clear we were leaving the touristic part of the city far behind. Hotels and ice cream shops were replaced by low cost, self built housing and barbed wire. I had stayed far away from the widely advertised “Favela tours” that have become trendy in the past few years, unable to escape the feeling of it being poverty porn designed to make visitors feel better about their own lives. As such, this was my first experience of seeing these neighbourhoods up close, and it was far better to do so in a way that felt genuine and not staged for Instagram likes.
As the journey continued, the moment arrived where I started to get worried. “Seu funeral” (English - your funeral) started to appear painted on walls everywhere you looked, with an arrow pointing in the way we were travelling. Still better than encountering a group of English people on holiday, but still not exactly ideal. After several minutes of following these signs, I was just about mentally prepared for my doom. At least I’d seen Wales at Euro 2016 and Llantwit win the league before I was brutally murdered. Finally, the funeral signs reached their destination…
A funeral home called “Seu funeral”.
With a fresh lesson in not jumping to conclusions, I arrived at the stadium expecting to see a big crowd. With the stadium holding around 14,000, and America-RJ not being a club that wins things often, I thought the stadium would be packed even despite the heavy defeat in the first leg.
I was wrong.
I’ve seen bigger crowds when Llantwit Major U9’s were at home to Cowbridge Town, with the (brilliant) stadium almost completely empty. At one point I feared I might be the only person there who wasn’t the parent of one of the players, although a small late surge just before kick off thankfully put an end to that.
Still, for most of the game it wasn’t exactly the end to the trip I was hoping for. Until suddenly, it was.
With the score at 0-0 America-RJ got a penalty, and with it the chance to at least have a hope of getting back in the game. They missed, and a few minutes later Vasco scored to make it 1-0 on the day and 5-1 on aggregate. Game over.
Knowing they had lost, the game started to get absolutely brutal. Back in my university days we had played our own specific version of FIFA 11 that involved going out to the Gatecrasher nightclub until 4am, coming home and firing up the Playstation 3 before seeing who could get 5 red cards the fastest. The way America-RJ played in the last 20 minutes of this game is just about the closest I’ve come to witnessing those virtual games in real life, as they started to make some hideous tackles.
It was almost surprising that things didn’t boil over until the very last minute. But when they did, they did so in style! A Vasco player got the ball and nutmegged an opponent, who responded by kicking him as hard as he could in the arse, before punching him in the face.
10 seconds later, and it’s absolute chaos. Both benches are cleared, and there’s flying kicks and punches all over the field. The game is actually available in full on YouTube, and I think this grainy screenshot tells you more than 1000 words could.
This wasn’t 30 seconds of handbags that you sometimes see at the end of a game, it looked more like I had accidentally wandered in to filming for a Brazilian remake of Lord of the Rings battle scene. Having won the game, I’d say Vasco just about won the fight too, with several America players left with ripped shirts, bruised egos, and stinging eyes after the arrival of riot police who had used tear gas on them.
I was stood in the away end, which was at least 15ft high and completely unreachable from the field. This meant I could mock the America players as much as I wanted, without having to worry about the fact they would surely kick my head in if I actually had any intention of fighting them. If you were ever wondering how fun it is to give furious players who just lost a cup final and pepper sprayed the wanker sign, the answer is - extremely.
There was never any chance that the match would restart for the final minute or so that were left to be played, and the trophy was awarded to Vasco - although they were unable to lift it for at least another 40 minutes or so while the police took back control of the situation.
My Uber ride home added an extra word to my Brazilian vocabulary, as I learned “Bomba” meant “scandal” after my Vasco supporting driver repeatedly used the word and I looked round anxiously to see if one of the America-RJ players had managed to get hold of a bomb.
In what had threatened to be the ultimate damp squib of a final game, I was instead left with a memory for life. I left Brazil with an absolute love for the country, and part of that is definitely due to the fact that less than an hour after thinking what a boring game I was watching, I was contemplating whether or not one of the players in the game might actually be trying to bomb me.
Joga bonito.
