Futebol

by Alex Bellos

  Zaguinha's real name is Manoel da Silva. It is the Portuguese equivalent of John Smith, one of the most anonymous names it is possible to have. In many ways Zaguinha is the universal Brazilian. His story of creativity through adversity reflects the circumstances of the country and the resourcefulness of its citizens. That he is valuing nothing more than playfulness and ball skills makes him the personification of the national passion. More than anyone else I met I felt he best encapsulated football and Brazil.

  Zaguinha was always good at knocking a ball around. But his father died when he was thirteen and he worked as a farm hand to look after his family. He ended up with a job digging holes for the council of a small town near the Paraguayan border. In his early thirties he experimented in trying keepie-uppies using a snooker ball. He perfected his technique and moved on to other spherical – or vaguely spherical – objects like onions, beetroot and pineapple.

  In 1994 he was watching television and he heard Silvia Popovic, a Brazilian Oprah Winfrey, tell viewers to 'Follow Your Dreams'. He packed his bags, travelled 450 miles to São Paulo, and made his way to the central square. It was the World Cup and there was a huge outdoor TV screen. He started ball-juggling and crowds gathered round him. He appeared on TV a few times and spent the next four years earning money doing keepie-uppie demonstrations on the street.

  Zaguinha, a widower and grandfather of four, is now sponsored by sports manufacturer DalPonte. He wears DalPonte clothes, and carries a DalPonte ball in a string bag the way an executive would carry a briefcase or a mechanic a box of tools. In a leather purse he keeps his money and a set of ball bearings. His record with a 2mm ball bearing, the smallest, is 502. The technique is to keep his left foot on the ground and with his right leg bent move the foot up and down like it is controlled by a puppet string. 'There's a way of hitting everything,' he says.

  Of the keepie-uppie coterie, Zaguinha performs more tricks and with more different objects than anyone else. He also performs in more unconventional places. He paraded through the São Paulo sambadrome during carnival without the ball falling and he competed in São Paulo's annual New Year's Eve run. He managed the 15km in two and a half hours. He considered it a training exercise and let the ball drop ten times.

  In Rio, only one man is not impressed by Zaguinha. 'Ach! He is young,' dismisses Jankel Schor. 'He has age on his side.' Jankel is seventy-four, Zaguinha's senior by a quarter of a century. Jankel believes he is the oldest footballer in the world. He recently received a laminate from the Maracanã stadium giving him access to the pitch as a 'Sportsman in Activity' – a unique version of an OAP bus pass. Hundreds of thousands of Brazilians have seen Jankel demonstrate his keepie-uppie skills – first at Vasco's São Januário stadium and now, during almost every big game, at the Maracanã.

  Jankel's trajectory is very different from his colleagues, yet not less authentically Brazilian. His family are Russian Jews from Moscow; Jankel Schor is a name as undisguis-ably Jewish and East European as pickled cucumber. The Schors arrived in Rio in 1933, capitalists escaping communism, when Jankel was five years old. He was offered a contract by Vasco in the 1940s. 'My dad never let me sign it. He was a very radical Jew, very religious. He had very traditional opinions, he thought that if I became professional I would turn into a bum.' Jankel still seems angry at his father's intransigence. He has, in the jargon, not entirely achieved closure. When he tells the story his sunken eyes carry the weight of lost opportunity.

  JankePs father sold schmutter on the streets. Jankel built up a chain of five shops selling children's furniture, but handed them to his son who expanded too quickly and lost the lot. Jankel now walks the street, selling shirts from a holdall, to pay his health insurance.

  All his adult life Jankel played football within Rio's Jewish community. With age he retired from playing matches and concentrated on practising keepie-uppies, until he was spotted on the beach and invited by Eurico Miranda, then vice-president of Vasco, to perform at the São Januário. It has given him a new lease of life. His trademark is to walk into stadiums with the ball balanced on his head, like a circus seal. 'No one my age can do that,' he says proudly. 'I consider myself a phenomenon.'

  'I don't have time to train. But if I did train for a week, I could keep the ball up for two hours. What I'm lacking isn't technique, it is fitness.' Jankel is a battler still. 'No one is left from my era. I am a survivor. If I had the time to train I would go far.'

  I estimate that there are at least twenty 'keepie-uppie professionals' in Brazil. The most unexpected is the Man With The Crutches. One of his legs ends just below the knee. Using the thigh and knee of his injured leg he can keep the ball in the air. Neither age nor gender are barriers in Brazil to footballing prominence. Nor is physical disability. Half a leg is good enough.

  The Man With The Crutches is a mythical figure. I had seen him several times over three years. At the Maracanã he would walk with his crutches from one side of the turf to the other and back again, bouncing the ball on his stump. He always received huge applause. But no one at the stadium ever knew his name, or how to get hold of him.

  After a six-month absence, he appeared at the Maracanã in March 2001 during half-time at the Guanabara Cup final, the first stage of the Rio championship. I ran to catch him as he walked out of the stadium in the opening minutes of the second half. He was wearing a Brazil shirt with Pelé marked on the back. He is tall, mulatto, and has long, straggly black hair.

  He told me his name was Fernando Sousa de Araiijo, that he was thirty-eight, born in Pernambuco, and that he lost his leg when he was run over by a car in 1984. At the time he was a professional with the Rio club America. He has no home. He has spent the last fifteen years travelling Brazil, going from stadium to stadium, surviving on the goodwill of people he meets on the way. He seems a little shaken that a journalist is asking him questions. 'Is it a good life?' I ask.

  'Yeah, it's healthy, it's happy,' he replies somewhat reluctantly. And he hops along the Maracanã car park and disappears into the terraces.

  In February 2002, Ricardo Neves reportedly broke the world keepy-uppy record, performing about 210,000 during a twenty-seven hour period in a Brasilia shopping centre.

  * Carioca: meaning of or from Rio de Janeiro.

  Chapter Nine

  FROGS AND MIRACLES

  'In football, as in everything else, no Brazilian can exist without a charm around his neck, without his saints and his set of vows – in a word, without his personal and non-transferable God.'

  Nelson Rodrigues

  Father Edu was desperate to get in touch with Ronaldo. Did I know the footballer personally? Could I find his telephone number? Could I put a message in the Guardian} Father Edu told me that Ronaldo had been put under a curse. He told me matter-of-factly, as if there was nothing more natural in the world, as if he was a doctor diagnosing someone with a common cold. The explanation was simple. Romario had acquired bad spirits from having too much sex. Ronaldo, younger, spiritually weaker, more susceptible, had caught the spirits when the two strikers partnered each other during Brazil's 1998 World Cup preparations. Of course Ronaldo would flop in the tournament. His health scare was neither epilepsy nor illness. The cause was evil spirits. It was obvious. Father Edu had even predicted it. And look – afterwards Ronaldo had failed to return to form. The spirits were still there, stubborn. Exorcism was the only hope. But for this Father Edu needed the footballer's permission. He did not need Ronaldo to travel to his official residence in Olinda. All he needed was to speak to the striker on the phone. Was I sure I could not get hold of him?

  I visited Father Edu in February 1999. My taxi had dropped me off in Olinda's old town, an area of well-preserved colonial architecture, full of restaurants and galleries. Olinda was one of Brazil's first cities, built on the wealth of the surrounding sugar plantations. Next door to the imposing sixteenth-century Se do Salvador church, on a steeply sloping cobbled street, is Iemanja Palace. It is an unassuming building despite its grand name. Th
e most distinctive feature was ruminating in the car park: an anxious-looking grey bull, secured with a rope around its horns and jaw.

  Father Edu was sitting behind a table in the palace's main hall, receiving visitors. He is an exotic fifty-nine-year-old: short, tubby, with dyed cherry-blond hair and smelling of sweet perfume. His diction was as warm and quiet as a purring cat, both monotonously earnest and extravagantly camp. Instead of saying 'no' he exhaled 'nonononononono . . .' until he slowly ran out of breath. Like most Brazilians, he could not resist a chat about football. Only he saw the game in a different dimension. Once we had established Ronaldo's perilous predicament, conversation moved on to the real reason of my visit: Náutico, a football club from the neighbouring city, Recife. Father Edu was hours away from sacrificing the animal tied in the car park. 'To this day Náutico owe Exu a bull and until they pay it they will continue with the bad karma,' he said. Simple. Náutico must pay up, or be rubbish for ever.

  Exu is a powerful, greedy, short-tempered and occasionally benevolent deity from Candomble, an Afro-Brazilian religion that emerged from the superimposition of Catholicism on African cults. Slaves were baptised on arrival. They gained a new religion while keeping their own, which created a correspondence between Catholic saints and African gods. Figures are hard to find, but perhaps seventy million Brazilians have an affinity with Candomble and its variants. The religions have neither dogma nor a central authority. Afro-Brazilian priests, like Father Edu, give spiritual guidance in their own temples, which can be anything from a small house to a community hall.

  Father Edu had first humoured the gods in 1962. Náutico's centreforward asked the young priest for some help. Father Edu conducted ceremonies in which he incorporated one of Candomblé's more extrovert entities – the spirit of Zé Pelintra, a bohemian smartarse more than a little partial to booze and cigars. The ritual used up litres of cachaça and appeared to work. Between 1963 and 1966 Náutico won the Pernambuco state championship four times.

  Náutico is the club of the Recife upper classes. Some of its white, Catholic directors objected to the influence a black priest was having within its walls. Father Edu was booted out. The team started to lose. Náutico returned to ask for his help. This time they promised him a bull if Náutico won the 1967 championship. The title came but the bull never did. The following year Father Edu insisted that Náutico fulfil their side of the deal. On the day of the state final a bull arrived. But without a crucial part: the animal had been neutered. The gods would not be amused. Still, Náutico won – making them 'hexa-champions', the first team to win the state championship six times in a row. But there was a price to pay.

  After the glorious 1960s the club went through three decades of mediocrity, winning the state championship only four times. Their last title was in 1989. The team had tried everything to get out of its rut. When teams feel powerless they often search for mystical excuses. Maybe it was the debt to Father Edu. Some Náutico directors thought it safest to bring him a bull. Thirty-one years late, the club decided to settle its score. This time Father Edu decided to upgrade the ceremony. Instead of indulging Ze Pelintra, the recipient would be Exu, the most demanding deity, and the one most closely associated with the Christian Devil.

  I could see that preparations for the ceremony were almost complete. Neatly arranged on the floor of Iemanja Palace were twelve bottles of cachaça, a bottle of whisky, palm oil, manioc flour, cigars, peppers, honey, onions and salt. Night drew closer. Father Edu prepared to change out of his red armless vest and into religious garb: a baggy white T-shirt, white trousers and a knee-length black and red cape. He sharpened his knife.

  To many people the sacrifice was a harmless piece of fun, a picturesque example of Brazilian folk culture and of the extremes to which a passion for football can stretch. Not everyone saw it that way. News of the ceremony had spread through Brazil. One and a half thousand miles away, in São Paulo, it reached the desk of an animal protection group. Shortly afterwards the Pernambuco Secretary of Public Security received a fax, quoting a one-year-old law that banned cruelty to animals. Police were dispatched.

  The showdown at Iemanja Palace was a clash of cultures and generations. Father Edu, surprised, irritated, playing innocent. 'I've always killed bulls at my temples,' he pleaded. In vain. The police didn't budge. On their side was the letter of the law; modern, humanitarian, First World Brazil. Father Edu was obliged to cancel the ceremony. But he informed Náutico's directors that since they had fulfilled their part of the bargain, they could be confident the club's fortunes would improve. He made the bold statement: 'Even without the sacrifice, the debt is paid and the team is no longer at risk.'

  Father Edu had lost on the night. Náutico were victorious. The team improved. In 2001 at last they won the state championship. I telephoned Father Edu and instantly recognised his syrupy tones. The subject quickly left Náutico and turns to more general football topics. And Ronaldo, did I still not have his telephone number? The striker was recovering from a severe knee injury. More evidence, if it was needed, of the persistence of malevolent spirits. Father Edu reiterated his track record and insisted: 'All I need is his permission and I can undo the spell.'

  Vasco da Gama were victims of the most famous curse in Brazilian football. Twice. It dates back to Arubinha and his frog. He might never have had a frog, and he might never have buried it under the pitch at Vasco's São Januário stadium. That is beside the point. The Curse of Arubinha's Frog existed and was taken seriously.

  One rainy December evening in 1937 Vasco were due to play Andarai, a much weaker team. On the way to the game Vasco's convoy crashed into a refuse truck. With Vasco's players held up by the collision, Andarai's players waited at the ground, sodden and cold. Andarai could have claimed the points but agreed that the game would take place when Vasco eventually showed up. Andarai only asked that, in a similar spirit of sportsmanship, Vasco would not abuse their goodwill.

  The game started and the gentleman's agreement was instantly forgotten. Vasco knocked in the goals. At half-time they were five up. After ninety minutes, 12-0. Arubinha, on the Andarai bench, knelt down on the grass, clasped his hands together and looked towards the sky: 'If there is a God in heaven, Vasco must go without the championship for twelve years.' One year for every goal.

  Rumour spread that Arubinha had confirmed the curse by burying a frog under the São Januário turf. Frogs, guardians of the rain, are routine vehicles in Brazil for transmitting spells. Vasco's directors laughed. A few years later they did not see the funny side. The club had not won the championship since Arubinha's malediction. Worse, it had the strongest squad in Rio and with the 1943 title in its grasp had lost 6-2 to Flamengo. Vasco asked for advice. A former player with a spiritual calling took a stick around the pitch that – he said – would locate any frogs or froglike remnants. Nada.

  The following year Vasco again had a knockout team. Again they lost the state title to Flamengo. They had one option left. A tractor dug up the entire pitch. Frogless. Vasco fans starting doing sums. If the curse was valid from 1937 it would last until 1949. However, maybe it could be backdated to 1934 – their last championship – and be over in 1946. Vasco's directors begged Arubinha: please, tell us where the frog is? Arubinha said he never buried one and promised the curse would be over. Vasco were champions, unbeaten, in 1945.

  Father Santana remembers the next time Vasco had a disturbingly long run without winning the Rio de Janeiro state title. After victory in 1958, the affliction of Arubinha's amphibian reappeared. The drought of victories lasted twelve years. Twelve. Confirmation the curse was true. Father Santana knows because he was the chief exorcist in 1970. 'Vasco were going through a really bad phase. It was necessary to do something,' he says.

  Few figures have combined sport and spirituality with as much élan as Vasco's legendary masseur. I had first seen him at a match at São Januário. He walked out of the tunnel with the team looking like Ving Rhames, a huge black man with a bald head and a purposeful strid
e. He was wearing a white overcoat and carrying a sports bag. Fans cheered the names of the players, one by one, standard practice before games in Brazil. Then a twelfth name: 'San-ta-na, San-ta-na'. He laid out a Vasco banner in front on him, kneeled down and kissed it. He picked up the banner and shook it at the adoring crowd. 'How many goats have you killed today?' one voice shouted above the applause.

  Father Santana has twin duties at Vasco – relaxing the players' muscles and pampering the Afro-Brazilian gods, the orixds. Only the former is an official function – and he has good credentials, having been Brazil's masseur in the 1962 and 1966 World Cups. The latter role is self-appointed and resoundingly endorsed by the supporters. For decades he has been a much-loved fixture at Vasco games, energetically spurring the team on from the sidelines. 'Rare is the club whose masseur is not a specialist in black magic,' wrote Realidade magazine in 1966. Father Santana shows it still goes with the job.

  'To get rid of Arubinha's curse,' he explains, 'we organised a ceremony at São Januário.' He assembled about twenty friends. They arrived at nighttime, with candles, food and animals. 'We sat on the pitch and prayed and made our offerings.' The mediums among them entered a state in which spiritual entities entered their bodies. They threw seashells on the ground. The shells' pattern contained messages. 'We were told to do several things. We even buried a wooden cross behind one of the goals,' he adds. At 5am the work was done. Vasco were 1970 champions. 'Since that day Vasco have only improved.'