Football fundamentalists

Having enjoyed myself so much last time at the San Januario, I had no qualms about going to watch another Vasco game on Sunday. Thanks to the kind assistance of our hostel, Mellow Yellow, we headed to the ground hoping for more Romario goals and Vasco passion.

With nothing really at stake in the game, it wasn´t surprising that only a rather small crowd had decided to show up. There were certainly a lot less fans than at the Fluminese game. But the Vasco drummers were as enthusastic as ever, and as the rain started to pour down, everyone surged backwards for shelter creating a quite a decent atmosphere for kick off.

The first half was entertaining and fairly open as Vasco dominated a poor Paysandu team. Romario was hoping to catch up with the league´s leading scorer, Paysandu striker Robson, and should have opened the scoring after just 5 minutes when a defender completely missed a right wing cross, but despite having time to steady himself, he shot straight at the keeper. He wasted an ever better chance midway through the half when he missed a penalty. The teams went in at half time goal-less.

The game roared into life in the second half however as Diego fired in, following a Morais cross. Morais scored then scored a stunning long-range second goal to put Vasco 2-0 up, before Romario beat the keeper in the area to put the game out of sight in just 7 second half minutes. The rest of the match was pretty much a formality, and was finished off in style with a second Romario goal three minutes from time, taking him to within one goal of Robson. There hadn´t quite been the excitement and tension of the last Vasco game, but we´d certainly enjoyed some fantastic goals.

As the crowd started to disperse, I looked up to see a huge Vasco fan making his way towards me shouting, ´Hey, you!´.

It turned out that he had recognised the Aston Villa shirt I was wearing and was a massive fan himself. Introducing himself as Bernard, he explained that he had studied for a while in England and went to see Villa v Blackburn in 1999. He´d even bought a Villa shirt for his baby daughter when she was born (along with a Vasco one of course) !

After comparing Dwight Yorke and Juan Pablo Angel for 5 minutes he revealed that he was one of the directors for the Vasco da Gama hooligans. I was slightly taken aback by this since he seemed like such a nice guy and asked if they should maybe refer to themselves as ´hardcore fans´instead. In a matter-of-fact manner he replied that they arranged all the guns and fights for away games so they actually were hooligans.

I also questioned him about the provacative imagery used by Brazilian clubs for their flags and emblems. Vasco hooligans use Eddie the Zombie from Iron Maiden, while I had also seen Flamengo´s fans waving flags with the ice-mask of Jason from the horror movie Friday 13th. Further, at the game today we had seen several people wearing an extremely graphic t-shirt displaying a girl in a Flamengo t-shirt fellating a Vasco fan.

Bernard explained that the various hooligan groups had come into fruition 15 years ago, when violence was much more prevalent. Vasco had many Iron Maiden fans at the time and thus chose Eddie. The bassist from the band had even come to a game when Iron Maiden played in Brazil!

He also told me that the societies are actually recognised by the clubs and get into games for just 1 Brazilian Reais (about 25p). Indeed, these were the fans that were the heart of the crowd, bringing banners, flags and drums and keeping the atmosphere going throughout the game. Yet they were also responsible for causing much of the trouble outside the stadium, precisely because of the fervence of their support. These were the fans that were prepared to actually live and die for their club.



I thanked Bernard for the conversation, but left the ground feeling slightly confused about the destructive nature of his total obsession for football. I wanted to re-gnite my passion for the game, but fundamentalism of any kind is clearly a dangerous thing.