The ‘people’s team‘ from São Paulo upset Chelsea this morning in Japan and delivered Brazilian football a particularly delicious triumph.

By Dom Phillips

It has been six years since a South American team won the FIFA Club World Cup. But today Corinthians deserved every centimetre of their 1-0 victory, having outplayed Chelsea with a performance that showed the São Paulo team at its very best.

Owned by a Russian billionaire, managed by a Spaniard, with a team stocked by expensive, international players like Spain’s Fernando Torres and Brazil’s Ramires, Chelsea were far and away the favourites.

But Corinthians played with the technique, the skill, the defensive capacity, and most of all the garra – or sheer force of will – that characterises their game at its best. And with a headed goal by Peruvian forward Paulo Guerrero that gave them the trophy, the team have caused a major upset in world football.

At kick-off, it did not look so balanced: Corinthians had struggled to beat Egyptians Al-Ahly 1-0 in the semi final, whereas Chelsea had effortlessly disposed of Mexico’s Monterrey 3-1. Even Corinthians coach Tite had refused to promise victory, saying instead the team would leave fans proud.

This was precisely what they did, taking the game to Chelsea from the beginning, while growing in confidence and stature as the match developed and it became obvious that, yes, the team from London could be beaten. Chelsea threatened time and again. But when the Corinthians defence did falter, goalkeeper Cássio held firm – a goal-line save with his legs was just one of his heart-in-the-mouth, match-saving moments. He deserved his man-of-the-match prize.

This was a tense, but fluid game. But Corinthians kept coming back and kept coming forward. Tite’s advance defence system – in which every player, no matter how far forward he is, has the job to close down the opposition and get the ball back – saw Corinthians winning possession time and time again.

It took them 69 minutes to score as the ball rebounded from the Chelsea goalmouth, out to midfield and back again. In a deft and determined play, Danilo moved laterally across the area to shoot – and Guerrero seized upon the rebound to head the ball home. Even then, Corinthians did not sit back: they defended hard, fought for the ball in midfield, constructed attack after attack, while Chelsea, technically superior, always looked dangerous on the break.

And when the whistle blew, Chelsea looked stunned in defeat. They had not expected to lose. With the game over, the cameras panned over the sour, disbelieving faces of Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Fernado Torres. “Chelsea fume after world final defeat,” read the Guardian headline.

The victory tops a remarkable year for Corinthians. In December 2011, on the same day that they were mourning the loss of their former captain Sócrates, Corinthians sealed the Brazilian championship. Six months later, after decades of disappointment, the team beat Boca Juniors to win the Libertadores – South America’s Champions League. And now, a hard-fought and, outside of Brazil at least, unexpected victory over European champions Chelsea.

It was all very different a year ago, when the high hopes that Santos would beat Barcelona were crushed 4-0. And it is a victory Brazilian football should be grateful for. Two years away from hosting the World Cup, the Brazilian national team still struggles to find its rhythm and has just been given a new manager: ‘Big Phil’ Scolari. In Brazil, attendances are low and the game even in the country’s top division cannot compare to the pace and finesse of Champions League teams. Corinthians are not celebrated for playing the fluid, creative ‘beautiful game’ Brazil is famous for. But today they gave Brazilian football a much needed shot in the arm.

Because for a team from São Paulo that is largely made up of workmanlike Brazilian league players to go to Japan and beat one of the richest, most famous, and most successful teams in Europe with its multi-million dollar line-up of global talent, is a particularly delicious Brazilian victory.

São Paulo’s gritty Corinthians will take on Boca Juniors of Buenos Aires Wednesday, in a rematch of last week’s thrilling tie. The match, set for 21:50 at São Paulo’s Pacaembu stadium, is the second of the two-part final that will determine the champion of the continent.

By Dom Phillips

One-nil down to Boca Juniors in their gladiatorial La Bombonera stadium in Buenos Aires is not a good place for any team to be. Especially when it’s the final of the Libertadores Cup – South America’s equivalent to Europe’s Champions League. But Corinthians went down 27 minutes into the second half, after a shot by Roncaglia emerged from a goalmouth scramble.

But with the sense of drama that is one of their trademarks, São Paulo’s Corinthians somehow pulled it back with a dazzling and opportunistic goal from 21-year-old substitute Romarinho that silenced La Bombonera. In the 40^th minute of the second half, four minutes after entering the pitch. It was the stuff soccer folklore is made of.

The young hotshot had already scored against twice against São Paulo rivals Palmeiras the previous Saturday. He’s scored three goals in just four games for the team. But it doesn’t get much bigger than a Libertadores final – and now everyone in Brazil knows who he is.

And Corinthians are a team currently lacking a matador, killer, or goalscorer. Instead it is a job divided amongst the team. Consequently Romarinho’s moment didn’t just put Corinthians back in the game, it put the trophy that has eluded the team for the 53 years of the championship’s existence back within reach: with away goals counting double in the event of a draw, 1-1 is not a bad starting point for Wednesday’s decisive second game at São Paulo’s Pacaembu stadium.

But there is still a long, tense 90 minutes to go for Corinthians, in front of a crowd rabid for victory. Nerves could very easily fail them. Boca have a strong team with strikers like Riquelme capable of putting the wind up the home side. History is not on Corinthians’ side: in nine Libertadores games in Brazil since 2000, Boca have only lost one.

And Boca goalkeeper Orion has been stoking the Brazilians’ nerves with provocative talk of a Boca turnaround victory. “Brazilians feel troubled against Argentineans,” he told Fox Sports Monday. “Boca’s statistics weigh heavily. I hope we can continue feeding this.” He added: “We’re going to win and bring home the cup.”

Not if Corinthians can do anything to stop them. This is a team that can feel the hands of football history on their shoulders, along with the weight of expectation of 30 million fans, and the eyes of the whole of Brazil. Whatever happens, it should be one hell of a game. And if all else fails, there’s a 21-year-old substitute called Romarinho on the bench with stars in his eyes.

[photo above: The now-famous Romarinho slips one by Boca and makes a name for himself, last week in Buenos Aires]

The legions of fans in the outskirts of São Paulo that celebrate and suffer along with Corinthians, arguably Brazil’s toughest soccer team, are maddeningly close to clinching the South American title.

By Dom Phillips

“Hawk steals reporters cell-phone at Corinthians training,” is not a headline sports reporters tend to write. Yesterday one did. The story had everything a sports reporter needed on a slow day: soccer, a girl, an iphone, and a bird of prey – especially as Corinthians biggest organized supporters club is called the Gaviões da Fiel, the Hawks of the Faithful. And the iphone in question was a very lurid pink.

It happened as São Paulo soccer team Corinthians were training on the edge of the city. Press are allowed in to watch. A player is generally put up for a press conference afterwards. As this was the day after Corinthians had won a hard-fought 1-0 victory over rivals Santos in a crucial first-leg semi-final in the South America-wide Libertadores championships, most of Brazil’s news media was represented. I happened to be there too, working on a piece for British soccer magazine 442.

Roberta Gabardo, a reporter for the RedeTV! Network, had put her iphone down for a moment when the hawk appeared and nicked it. Immediately the press and camera crews clustered round, as the bird trotted up and down with a pink cell-phone in its beak, until somebody had the courage to grab it. The next day, it made a story on the uol news site.

At the press conference afterwards, Corinthians goalkeeper Cássio explained that the hawk is a regular visitor to training and the players give it food. I suspect its media career isn’t over yet. It’s a good example of how ravenously Brazilians will consume any news titbit about football – but also of how they like to have fun with it.

While the game is taken deadly seriously, it’s also played for laughs, particularly amongst supporters. Brazilian football banter is quick-witted, cruel, and, much like the hawk who really didn’t want to give up that enticingly-coloured iphone, unrelenting.

My favourite is a visual gag that whizzed around facebook the morning after São Paulo team Palmeiras were slaughtered 6-0 by Coritiba: a photo of a plane in the colours of low-cost airline Gol (Goal), with ‘GOL’ painted six times on on its fuselage in orange instead of the usual one, and a caption suggesting this was the Palmeiras team’s flight home.

I was at the 41^st birthday party the night of the Santos-Corinthians game, which the male host, a santista, or Santos fan, had combined with the match. His living room was evenly divided into two arquibancadas, or terraces for opposing fans, seated either side of the television.

Tension was running high, especially when Corinthians scored an early goal. When a swarm of blacks-shirted Corinthians players buzzed angrily around Santos’s star player Neymar, the santistas began to roar their indignation: “Look! How many of them are there?” A corinthiano roared back: “The Corinthians ants! The Corinthians ants!”

Corinthians, as the tradition goes, are the time do povo (the people’s team), its supporter heartlands the endless cinder block periferia, or poor suburbs, in São Paulo’s Zona Leste, or East Zone. When Brazilian military invaded the lawless Vila Cruzeiro favela in December 2010, TV Globo’s helicopter broadcast memorable images of armed bandits fleeing up a dirt track to safety in a nearby favela. Immediately a screen-grab of the instantly-recognisable swarm of bandits did the facebook rounds, with a Corinthians badge inserted and captions ‘identifying’ fleeing gang members as Corinthians players.

The club’s popularity makes it the one team in São Paulo everybody else loves to hate. Emails for that 41^st birthday party said that the amount of corinthianos attending meant there would be a search on the door. They’re just jealous.

Passionate, diehard Corinthians fans cheer and sing the loudest when Corinthians concede a goal. Their samba drums beat with the most intensity. They might be the second biggest torcida (fan-group) in Brazil with some 30 million, compared to 40 million for Rio’s Flamengo. But they’re certainly the loudest. I was witness when they proved it one Sunday in December last year, when they clinched the Brazilian championship.

That morning, one of their most famous former players, the Brazilian great Sócrates, had died. Sócrates was captain of the legendary Brazil side of 1982. At Corinthians, he had led the Democracia Corinthiana (Corinthians Democracy) movement at the club in the early 1980s which briefly put decisions in the collective hands of all and coincided with the pro-democracy movement that finally ended Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1985.

Before kick-off, players raised one clenched fist in tribute to the gesture that Sócrates and Democracia Corinthiana made famous. Banners depicting his bearded image floated over the ground during the game. After a scrappy draw with Palmeiras left Corinthians champions, the elation and intensity in the stadium was, quite simply, something I’ll never forget.

The club was formed by workers in São Paulo after a visit in 1910 by the famous London amateur football club of the same name and the Romanesque municipal stadium, Pacaembu, where they play is situated in Praça Charles Miller, a square named after the Englishman believed to have introduced soccer to Brazil. All of which made them an obvious choice for a Brit like me to follow. And I’m not the only gringo corinthiano.

Corinthians fans are passionate and diehard. They wear T-shirts in the club colours of black and white with slogans like Louco Por Ti Corinthians (crazy for you Corinthians) and Nunca Vou Te Abandonar Corinthians (I’m never going to abandon you Corinthians). The team has a reputation for creating unnecessary drama: equalising or scoring a winner in the dying seconds of the game, prolonging the agony of their supporters beyond the bearable. The fate of a corinthiano is to ‘suffer’, the fan is a ‘sufferer’. Its players regularly thump the club logo over their hearts.

It’s all about the commitment and the drama, as fans who have supported them all their lives – unlike us gringo pretenders – are wont to explain. And the jokes. The team held doggedly onto that 1-0 lead over Santos until the end of the game, and now just need to draw at Pacaembu next Wednesday in the second leg to reach the final of the Libertadores.

Corinthians have never won the trophy and they want it so bad it hurts. Everybody else wants them to fail. Whatever happens, it will be suffering and drama and jokes right down to the last minute. Who knows, maybe even the Hawk will put in an appearance.

I’m reporting from the Carnival of Recife, in Pernambuco – but more on that later.

Before I left São Paulo, I caught a striking take on the samba parade.

Former President Lula is in treatment for cancer, so he could not march this year with Gaviões da Fiel, the samba school associated with Corinthians, his favorite football team. We knew that as a result, they would pay homage to him this year.

But we didn’t expect this. The hour-long show went through his life history, the political battles that led to the creation and success of the Worker’s Party (PT), which has dominated Brazilian politics for almost a decade, and its successes and vision for the future, all to a samba beat. We got the fall of the dictatorship, migration tales, and the major policy initiatives of the 21st century.

Essentially, what we saw was a history of modern Brazilian politics told through dance, and the costumes and placards donned by half-clothed women.

Continue on to see how it went

The man was born in the arid Northeast of Brazil, in a small poor town in the state of Pernambuco. Like many others at the time, his family migrated from the Northeast, which was languishing in poverty, to the industrial Southeast – in his case, São Paulo – to find work. He became a metal worker, and rose up through the system to be a political leader in the left-leaning union system. Here we see a version of him in traditional Northeastern costume, in front of two placards with distinctly Northeastern artwork.

Yes, that is a samba dancer carrying a card that reads “general strike”. Note the hard hat. What is unfortunately missing from our photo archives is the legions of these, men and women, that made up this part of the parade. In the late 70s, during the military dictatorship, the unions were involved in a set of contentious strikes, which eventually led to Lula being imprisoned for a month. There was also a float of him in jail.

This is a re-enactment of the marches in the ‘Diretas Já‘ movement, which demanded “direct elections now” at the end of military dictatorship, in 1984. Unlike some of the other parts of this parade, virtually all of the major post-dictatorship political players, left and right, consider this a major moment of victory for democracy.

The Worker’s Party was founded in 1980, and entered the official political scene with the fall of the dictatorship. Lula went on to lose presidential elections in 1989, 1994, and 1998. Here we see a float with banners naming issues which dominated opposition, and some of the goals of his presidency which started in 2003: food, health, education, etc.

A dancer wearing a house for a head, presumably meant to represent “Minha casa, minha vida”, or “My house, My life,” one of Lula’s social programs, this one aimed at expanding housing. His most famous was “Bolsa Familia”, a cash-transfer program to the poorest that boosted his popularity massively in the Northeast. These moderate programs, combined with relatively pro-business macroeconomic policy, dominated his presidency until hand-picked successor Dilma Rousseff took over in 2011.

Some other remarkable installations were dancers dressed as the “worker card,” a movement meant to represent the formalization of the labor sector, and one dedicated to hopes and dreams in the future of Brazil. Watch the video for the whole thing.

Lula speaking in a taped recording. Bald, because of the cancer treatment.

Links:

Watch the full, hour-long video on Youtube
More pictures (Folha de S.Paulo)

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