Taking, Um, a Breather

I've downloaded the Colo Colo vs. Sport match that went down on the 17th, but I haven't yet had time to sit down and watch it all the way through. I plan to do a full match report at some point, but I've got to straighten up the house and start the week so it may be as late as next Saturday before I can get back to it.

The short version is that Sport is definitely going with the strategy, mentioned by Nathan on The Lion's Roar some weeks ago, of counting on a packed-in defense that doesn't give up quick goals to score by counterattack with Paulo Baier and Ciro and thus outscore opponents despite spending a lot of time defending for long stretches of the game.

Whether the strategy can be said to be a success is still an open question, at least to me. Sport won, but against a team with better strikers than Colo Colo, they might have been in serious trouble.

The commitment I'm making is that I will have a synopsis posted before the next cup match goes off on the 4th. Until then, Valeu Sport!

Profiling Ciro

The full name of Sport's most promising young player is "Cirohenrique Alves Ferreira E Silva." In Brazil, however, it is common for players to adopt a single short name, so he is known to all simply as "Ciro."

Ciro is a homegrown Sport product; he was called up from the B team near the end of the 2008 Serie A campaign. Ciro scored four goals in nine appearances - an impressive pace for any player but particularly so for a 19 year old midseason callup.

Brazillian club soccer being what it is, it's probable that Ciro will be purchased by a European club if he indeed makes the leap and becomes a world-class forward, but in the meantime Sport fans can comfort themselves that he is under contract with the club until 2013.

In his first cup match Ciro notched a goal and an assist - doubly impressive given that there isn't another forward on the team who has any real flair for putting the ball into the back of the net.

Regularly Scheduled Programming

Stevo pointed me to a site a while back that, looking at the old listings, appears to be carrying the Copa Libertadores.

The site is www.atdhe.net and it seems to be pretty reliable. Sport's next match is on March 1st, but that's a regular Campeonato Pernambucano match, not a cup match so it may not be on.

Sport's next Copa Libertadores match will be on March 4th when Sport hosts la Liga at Ilha do Retiro (Sport's home stadium in Recife.)

Small Craft Warning - Heavy Seas

I'll warn any readers of this blog that what follows is a bit heavy - it's a poem I wrote last night about my experience of Nathan's funeral.

If that's not something you're feeling right now, come back later. Otherwise, I hope you find it meaningful.

---

Contents of Mourners' Pockets

Ring the bell
For across the bridges of this Unreal City flow the multitudes
And in their pockets they carry the remains of the dead

Son of the city
The mothers bring his heart, swollen and pulsing
Love, pain, truth, ruin

The fathers bring his eyes, luminous beneath streetlights
Where hard men walk, not swaggering,
Listing under the sallow glow of obligation

Brother of the city
The sisters carry his books, heavy and uncountable
Dragging dry pages that will not be read again
To the inferno that blackens the paper to match the ink

The brothers carry his music
It rings out over the roofs at dusk
The words woven into the chatter of one hundred tongues
The beat primal, insistent, thundering in the synchronic footfalls of the massing crowd

Here we will make a golem from these things we carry
With our ancient magic we will blow lion's breath
Into the mouth of this dead man, and he will walk among us
Until sleep drags us from this cold sweet night into the damp grey morning
Where we must arise with empty pockets
To tell the news of our great city
Now only ashes

Valeu Sport!

Nathan Raff was without much question the biggest US-born fan that Sport Club do Recife has ever had. He started two blogs about the team, Country of the Future and the Lion's Roar. His last post before he died concerned the likelihood of Sport's winning the Campeonato Pernambucano (they now have the championship sewn up) and the team's upcoming participation in the Copa Libertadores.

I am not always reliable when it comes to sticking with projects over the long haul, so I'm making no promises. But I feel a lot of regret that Nathan will not get to see his team participate in Brazil's most prestigious club tournament. So I'm going to do my best, using the means available to me, to follow the cup as closely as I can and to chronicle the path of Sport through the early stages and hopefully into the knockout stage.

First, a little background. The Copa Liberatadores, or "Liberator's Cup," is a South American championship much like the Champion's League in Europe. Top club teams from the various South American countries (and, for some reason, Mexico) are invited to participate in the cup. Sport is included in 2009 because in 2008 they won the Copa do Brasil, Brazil's national championship tournament.

Yesterday evening Sport played its first match of the group stage against Colo Colo, Chile's top team. The group stage consists of three home-and-home ties. Away victories are priceless in any home-and-home tie situation, and Sport came away with hard-fought 2-1 win.

All of Sport's scoring action was thanks to their star forward, the sublime Ciro. In the seventh minute a ball came into the box from Wilson and onto the head of midfielder Paulo Baier. He gave the ball just the barest graze with the top of his head, which was apparently not what anyone - except Ciro - was expecting. Two defenders and the goalkeeper were wrongfooted as the ball trickled tantalizingly across the left half of the six yard box. It looked as if Christian Munoz, the goalkeeper, would get there just in time, but instead Ciro knocked a quick left-footed shot effortlessly over him and into the open net.

Later in the first half ("primiero tempo" in Portuguese) Colo Colo lost possession in the midfield and the ball was quickly hit forward to Ciro, setting up a dangerous 2 on 2 break for with Wilson. Riquelme, the Chilean defender marking Ciro, was completely undressed by a quick fake to the outside and suddenly Ciro found himself alone, dribbling toward the box at pace. The second defender had no choice but to cheat over toward Sport's best forward, now completely unmarked, and Ciro calmly hit a gentle right-footed pass to a wide open Wilson, who slotted it home for what had to be one of the easiest goals of his career.

Magrao's clean sheet was spoiled in the second half ("segundo tempo") when some lazy defending by a packed-in Sport led to a cheap goal by Lucas Barrios, but in the end Sport prevailed, notching the full three points at Colo Colo's facility.

Sport must now be considered one of the favorites to come out of Group 1, though there is of course a lot of futbol left to be played.