Bizarre Brazil

Everyone knows how soccer is Brazilian national sport and blahblahblah. There are several leagues every year - state leagues for most Brazilian states, minor regional leagues, 2 national Cups among the country’s most important teams and the South-American Cup, Libertadores da America or “America Liberators”, the South-American counterpart to Eurocup. The winner of Libertadores is one of the teams who play the FIFA Club World Cup. Among the club supporters nationwide one of the most known for its supporters fanaticism and motivation is the Gremio from Porto Alegre (Fifa Club World Cup champion in 1983).

Yesterday Gremio qualified to the final match of Libertadores (which it won twice) and I told Ira if it did, I’d publish a post about it here. So here it is. It was a dramatic match against Santos (who also won two Cups) and not decided until the last minute, as good soccer match must be, heh.

But Gremio supporters are famous by their “avalanches” (human landslides) after a goal scored by the team. Bellow you can see Danny Dyer talking about Gremio in a real match footage last year in Porto Alegre. Danny is a British reporter whose show/documentary - The Real Football Factories International - was broadcast in UK by Bravo last 25th may.

This is the video showing a impressive “humanslide” in a match last year.

And this one shows a human landslide from inside the mob of supporters, after a penalty kick scored against Santos, last week:

As a curiosity, Ronaldinho started his successful career at Gremio and won a Brazilian League in 2001 with the team. And, yep, Porto Alegre is my hometown and, yep, Gremio is the soccer team I support.

This entry was posted on Wednesday, June 6th, 2007 at 3:49 pm and is filed under Brazil in the news, Oddities, Sports, Videos. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.