======================================================= Subject: Re: Ronaldo better numbers than Vieri in Italy Date: 27 Feb 1998 02:14:55 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) mdpaserm@login5.fas.harvard.edu (Marco Paserman) writes: > And why should I believe the Campeonato Brasileiro hype? How do I > know that Sport Recife is better than Brescia, Portuguesa is better > than Udinese, and Criciuma is better than Lecce? > There is no evidence in either direction, unless you want to talk of > a bunch of summer friendlies. Marco, Marco... you don't know anything about the depth of Brasilian soccer, do you? Did you know that Zagallo has been consistently playing the F team (and the Z team in the Gold Cup) just because he wants to use Europe-based players for obvious marketing reasons? Take Lampinho's case... I guess you probably never heard of Lampinho and the wonderful things he has been doing in Matto Grosso. Everybody talks about Roberto Carlos and his Tenerife thing, but forget to mention Lampinho's free kick when the ball went around the wall THREE TIMES before entering the goal. Do you think that if the likes of Lampinho were allowed in the national team Roberto Carlos would stand a chance? Because, you know, Lampinho also plays defence... real defence! He once was the only defender against the whole team from Camboriu, which BTW included the legendary Gaga'. That day the guys from Camboriu were allowed to play with 27 players, because Abilio D'Almeida was trying to impress a gorgeous garota from that city, and they couldn't go past Lampinho, who also consistently dribbled dozens of camboriuenses in his own box. That night, poor Abilio ended up comforting himself with Corpinho, the skillful wing from Matto Grosso, but that is material for another post... Now I wonder how would the team look like with Cagao up front, instead of the over-hyped Ronaldo. It's a well-known fact in the North West of Rhondonia that Cagao was once able to make 34 defenders fell down simultaneously with a single fake. He didn't score. Actually nobody ever saw Cagao score, he's not interested. Utilitarian art is not art, period. Zagallo is a toy of the multinational corporations so he will never admit the likes of Cagao in his team. I'm sure Alex or Irineu can tell you hundreds of stories about Cagao and his fellow striker Elninho. So next time you want to discuss Brasilian soccer, try to inform yourself first! Cheers, -- Marcelo PS: Lampinho is a trade mark from Les Luthiers. Voce lembra, Lampinho? ------------------------------------------------------- Subject: Re: Ronaldo better numbers than Vieri in Italy Date: Thu, 26 Feb 1998 22:57:54 -0500 From: Alex Mizuki (gt7290b@prism.gatech.edu) [snip - completely misinformed information about Brasilian players] No, no, no, you are the one who doesn't know a thing about Brasilian football, Marcelo. Everybody knows that the best strikers in the world are the fearsome duo of Babaca and Boco'. That stupid moron, Zagallo -- the only reason he's not using the Babaca-Boco' duo is because "RoRo" sounds much better than "BaBo" (which means "I drool" in Portuguese). Zagallo fears that such a pairing would constitute a confession of his senility. ============================================================ Subject: Re: Why Do So Many Brazilians Play In The J League? Date: 27 Feb 1998 02:24:59 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) Irineu Carvalho (carvalho@mit.edu) writes: > Why to spend dozens of million dollars for a Del Piero, if every > big team in Brasil has one young upcoming forward-playmaker at least > potentially as good as him (you name it: Denilson at Sao Paulo, Sousa > and Marcelinho Carioca at Corinthians, Hernani at Atletico Mineiro, > Geovani at Cruzeiro, Juninho at Vasco, Rodrigo at Flamengo, > Ronaldinho and Tinga at Gremio and so on and on). Once again you failed to mention Lampinho and Cagao, is that a conspiracy? Is it because they play in Matto Grosso and Rhondonia, respectively? I know Lampinho plays defence, but you are forgetting the day when he played #10 against Bage, who at the time had the terrible Sadamao in defence. How fast we forget... ==================================== Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 27 Feb 1998 05:49:59 GMT From: marcelo@fc.hp.com (Marcelo Weinberger) Carvalho (carvalho@mit.edu) wrote: : To give you an example of Zagallo's stupidity, just to name one case: : After Juninho's injury, Zagallo discovered that given that Giovanni : (BTW back to good shape now) failed the sofa test in Le Tournoi, : Brasil does not have any right-footed and successfully tested : offensive midfielder. : In spite of the abundance of lefties: Denilson, Leonardo, Zinho, : Djalminha, Rivaldo, Rodrigo... : ...Carlos Miguel, Sousa, Arilson, Alex de Sousa, Sergio Manuel! : It is unbelivable that Zagallo did not take the chance to test some of : the half dozen of righties that can be played at Juninho's place in : France. [...] : The most incredible absence is BETO. [...] : Are there others? Of course. : MULLER at Santos [...] : MARCELINHO CARIOCA [...] : JUNINHO (from Vasco) [...] : BISMARCK [...] You insist in ignoring both Lampinho and Cagao, not to mention Corpinho. I will point this out in every thread about Brasil, until you admit that they are the real A-teamers. ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 01:30:19 -0500 From: "Miguel A. Ballicora" (ballicor@pilot.msu.edu) How about Brazier? He is the perfect teammate of Corpinho. Another terrific duo is Ze Marica and Ze Lacome. They know the moves perfectly! Let's not forget the amazing striker Casimiro Concarinho. Not at the same level of Ze Marica, but almost... :-) ----------------------------------- Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 27 Feb 1998 08:00:13 GMT From: marcelo@fc.hp.com (Marcelo Weinberger) With this depth of players who needs the likes of Ronaldo? Maybe Nike? These ignorant Europeans don't understand that for every Denilson that is sold to Europe there are dozens of much better players that stay in Santa Ana do Livramento or Porto Velho. They don't know that Roberto Carlos was never allowed to take a free kick while playing in Campeonato Brasileiro, as he was never able to fulfill the minimum requirement of making the ball go twice around the wall before reaching the goal. Now, with Ze Marica the story is different. Apparently, the day that Abilio D'Almeida had to comfort himself with Corpinho due to the loss of the garota from Camboriu (see thread on Ronaldo vs. Vieri), Ze Marica made a big deal about him not being chosen. That day, he kissed the canarinha goodbye. Banana nao tein carozo. ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 09:21:13 +0100 From: Walter Garcia-Fontes (wgarcia@upf.es) Miguel A. Ballicora wrote: > [...] Come on! How can you forget Cuerinho from Pelotas F.C., this guy is able to dribble 10 players in 1 m^2! I would take him over Ze Marica all time, not to speak about the likes of Lampinho, Meao and Cagao! Walter Garcia-Fontes "Tuya, Hector!" ----------------------------------- Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 27 Feb 1998 17:51:36 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) As the eternal problem of Brasilian teams has been the lack of huevos, I always wondered why they never take some player from Pelotas... Sarava! ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: Fri, 27 Feb 1998 20:38:17 GMT From: dolina@stealth.net (Juan Gonzalez) I don't think it's so much a lack of huevos. That may be the case sometimes but most often the problem with Brazil is that they try to score the perfect goal and miss easy goals. Sometimes they also try to shoot it through the net so hard they wind up missing it more often than normal. In 1990 they should have beat Argentina for example but they tried to hit the ball so hard their shots weren't very precise. Then when they were losing they panicked and Argentina took the game away from them (some would call this a lack of huevos). The same happened against the US recently.. ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 27 Feb 1998 21:51:56 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) Take Cagao, for example. Despite being one of the most talented forwards in the world, as his victory in the how-many-defenders-can-you-beat-in-the-1m^2-dribbling contest would prove, he has never scored a goal. The reason is that he is still looking for the perfect goal. Once Matto Grosso visited Yaguarao (and you know that the guys down there in Rio Grande are the best defenders), and Cagao dribbled the whole Yaguarao team twice and still didn't score. After his first round of dribblings he decided that this wasn't perfect, as Ze Marica was able to slightly touch the ball while being dribbled, so he decided to dribble everybody one more time. This time, when he got to the goal line, the not-so-astonished people in the stands (after all, this kind of thing is not so uncommon in the Campeonato Brasileiro) thought "that's it, here you have a perfect enough goal." They didn't realize how high Cagao's standards were: Cagao did not put the ball between Concarinho's legs, which was clearly unacceptable. So he tried a third time but meanwhile the ref had allowed these cheaters from Yaguarao (too much South I guess) to field 17 more players, and so Cagao is still looking for the perfect goal. Anyway, Cagao remains o mais grande do mundo. Sarava, -- Marcelo ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 5 Mar 1998 23:36:01 -0700 From: mazzare@primenet.com (Ariel Mazzarelli) I am surprised, Marcelo, perhaps you did not want to recall the time when a transplanted porte~o living in Poxoreo had arranged a tour of the Matto Grosso for Pe~arol, promising easy games, easier money, and even easier garotas. After a narrow loss against Barra do Bugres (the porte~o had tricked the visitors by informing them that their opponents were a "barra de bagres") and a clear defeat at the feet of Rosario Oeste (Pe~arol foolishly assumed that they could not be better than Rosario Central), the bus rolled into Cuiaba looking for hotel fare. As it passed by a dirt lot Spencer saw Cagao practicing his planchas against a goalpost and immediately reached for the barf bag. When Cagao saw the bus, he ran up to a ball--and you know, the balls in those days were not the beach balls that we have today; when you kicked them, they kicked you back--but I digress, Cagao goes up to the ball and he hits it with comba at the bus, where it goes in through one of the two open windows on the left side, goes out the only open window on the right side, comes back into the remaining open window on the left side, and lands totally still at the feet of the catatonic Spencer. Mazurkiewicz, who had had enough by then, waited until an hour before the game to complain of a bout of indigestion from the previous night's ghiso do anacondas and stayed back at the hotel "to rest". I once talked to the petiso in a bar in Montevideo (I was only six years old, so I could not stay long) and trying my best to look innocent I asked him if anybody was better than Pele. So he told me, after making me promise not to tell anybody else, about Cagao. He was all smiles while he told me about Cagao's amazing bola reseca, but when I asked him "so are you ever going to visit him again?" he turned pale and, not wishing to strike someone shorter than himself, he quickly walked away. You know why Pele got to be on the selecao in 1958 instead of Cagao, right? ------------------------------------ Subject: Re: More thoughts on Brazil Date: 6 Mar 1998 22:44:46 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) Is this the same porten~o that before moving to Poxoreo came to Montevideo and toured the streets of Goes, Capurro, and Maron~as, looking for a centerhalf for the then underrated porten~o club Dock Sud? The idea was to add some huevos and some much needed innocent tackles to a side that was being taken as a punching ball by their feared opponents in Divisional C. Seating in a bar in La Union, after a few grappas and with two cigars on each side of his mouth, his local contact Paco Casallini convinced him that El Vasco Trolechea was the man for him. El Vasco didn't enjoy much his stay at Dock Sud, except the day that the barra brava of Nueva Chicago started his usual chant "Los de Dock Sud son todos putos." This is the story behind your man's exile in Poxoreo. > [Pen~arol's bus in Cuiaba] > [...] and lands totally still at the feet of the catatonic Spencer. You forgot to mention that Spencer then shouted: "Idiot! I wanted the ball in my head, no at my feet! Can't you learn from El Pardo Abbadie?" > I asked [Mazurkiewicz] if anybody was better than Pele. So he told > me, after making me promise not to tell anybody else, about Cagao. Actually, Mazurka played his first game for Pen~arol against Pele and his Santos guys in the third semifinal game of the 1965 Libertadores in Buenos Aires. That was the mother of all soccer games and Pele was hapeless against El Chiquito. No wonder he gave you the right answer: Cagao. ======================================= Subject: Re: Denilson..best midfielder? Date: 6 Mar 1998 23:25:22 GMT From: marcelo@fc.hp.com (Marcelo Weinberger) Alex Mizuki wrote: : Denilson is perhaps the most talented midfielder, but probably : not the best. [...]. I really can't think of : any player in the past to compare him to, though. Try Lampinho. ========================== Subject: Re: Ronaldo Assis Date: 10 Mar 1998 05:47:14 GMT From: marcelo@fc.hp.com (Marcelo Weinberger) 1visitor@pop.rio.nutecnet.com.br wrote: : Assis, brother of this same Ronaldo, appeared some years ago as a big : sensation and still in his teams got a signed contract with an : attorney to go play in Italy. It was a whole novel until the brazilian : team finally managed to keep its young player. It turned out that, in : spite of a few good games, Assis never really established himself as : the star people expected from him. : Further back in time, around early 80s, Gremio and its rival : Internacional went to almost extremes trying to win the priority over : a short black kid with a funny nickname, "Tia Joana". There were even : reports of an attempted kidnap by some directors, so obsessed they : were after seeing the young midfielder in action, especially the : precision of long passing. : Gremio won the round and took Renato Lima (the kid didn't like the : nickname. "Lima"was to differentiate from the other Renato, tagged : "Gaucho" in Rio) which then joined a team which was reaching the : highest trophies in the club's history. Paulo Cesar Caju, veteran of : World cups 70 and 74, once said something like "-He knows way more : than I do, he knows nearly all there is to know with a soccer ball. : Problem is the head." Caju certainly had a point. Raised in very poor : background and without effective counseling, Renato Lima lost the : battle against his own self, long nights and drinking pulling him away : from glory. Watched less gifted players become stars. : So now every time there is a young new sensation at Gremio's youth, : people there think first of a curse-like fear named "Tia Joana". Now you guys tell me who is more real: Cagao, Lampinho, Meao, Corpinho, Concarinho, Ze Marica, and other mythical players that have recently conquered RSS, or these Caju-Assis-Tia Joanna characters... Brasil is a wonderful place to understand that reality is not really important. Sarava! --------------------------- Subject: Re: Ronaldo Assis Date: Tue, 10 Mar 1998 03:21:16 -0500 From: A Mizuki (gt7290b@prism.gatech.edu) And Uruguay is a wonderful place to understand that the reality of a pathetic national team can be disguised in the light of "tradition." A tradition that requires an archeological excursion to find any meaningful results. And Marcelo, you can't really blow 1950 in my face because it means nothing to me -- it occured 25 years before I was born. I look forward to seeing Uruguay in France :-P -------------------------- Subject: Re: Ronaldo Assis Date: 10 Mar 1998 15:15:43 GMT From: mdpaserm@login5.fas.harvard.edu (Marco Paserman) The point is not really about Uruguay's tradition and achievements (including a serious Copa America in 1995 and others in the '80s). It's about how the rest of the world is a bit tired of hearing about all these mythical Brazilian 17-year olds who can do marvels with the ball in the Rio Grande do Sul State Championship, and who would stun the world if only they were given the chance to play in any top European League. Because the reality is that in 1994 Brazil's offensive midfielders were Zinho, Mazinho and Rai, and that Brazil's current number 10 can't even start in Serie A in place of a 35-year old Italian who couldn't even lead the Metrostars to the MLS playoffs. (no disrespect intended to MLS fans) Every country has its own virtual reality: Italians like to believe that Serie A is the toughest competition in the world, and that nowhere are defenses as strong as ours, or is there so much ractical awareness and discipline. The English like to think that their league is the most exciting, and that nobody in England ever fouls, cheats or dives (well, at least until their league was contaminated by all those bloody foreigners...). Real Madrid fans like to think that they are the best team in history because they won 5 EC1's back in the '50s. And Uruguayans like to believe that they are still the football masters, or at least that they have the highest quality/population ratio, even though probably today they would be crushed by Norway... Back to Cagao: this whole discussion reminded me of some very clever South American agents and some very dumb Italian team owners back in the early '80s, when Italy had just reopened its gates to foreigners. That's how Serie A got to admire the marvellous skills of Luvanor, Pedrinho, Fortunato (Argentinian), Victorino (Uruguay), and the unforgettbale Luis Silvio of Pistoiese...I'm sure Pistoiese fans have still to see an equally gifted player in all the years they've been wandering between Serie C1 and Serie C2... ------------------------- Subject: Re: Ronaldo Assis Date: 10 Mar 1998 19:27:07 GMT From: marcelo@apollo.HP.COM (Marcelo Weinberger) Alex Mizuki writes: > And Uruguay is a wonderful place to understand that the reality of a > pathetic national team can be disguised in the light of "tradition." You are so humor-impaired that you cannot even understand that I'm actually praising Brasil. I think that it was a Brasilian anthropologist who roughly classified South American cultures into three types: cultures that were just transplanted from Europe (Argentina, Uruguay, and to some extent Chile), cultures that were the result of European domination over the local population (all the others except Brasil), and then Brasil is a unique creation, an exciting blend that does not exist anywhere else. The perfect blend between reality and myth was magically described in Black Orpheus. BTW, Cagao was an extra in that movie.