Road Trippin´

After taking the cheap flight to Salvador in the middle of the night, we decided to get straight on the road by hiring a car and heading South towards the beach resort of Porto Seguro, 800kms away.

Even in remote areas alongside the highway we managed to find football everywhere. Most towns we drove through had kids playing on dusty pitches or on the roadside. Perhaps the most spectacular though was a partially flooded pitch on the banks of Rio Jequitinhohna. We watched from the bridge as 20 kids played a competitive match, gleefully taking it in turns to throw themselves into the river when the ball inevitably flew in.

We spent a few days recovering from the long road trip in Porto Seguro, before taking a more leisurely journey back towards Salvador via Ilheus, Itacare and the incredibly picturesque Morro de Sao Paulo.
One evening, just outside the port town of Valenca, we drove past a huge roadside crowd of around 300 cheering and shouting around a high, wire fence. Stopping to find out what was going on, we found ourselves watching the local tournament where teams play 5-a-side games on cordoned off, sand pitches. Chatting to some locals, we discovered that the game currently being played had finished all square and that they were playing the playground rule of ´next-goal-wins´. Excitedly, we found ourselves a decent spot to watch the action.

The furious pace of the game immediately showed that neither team wanted to lose as they raced around, tackling hard and shooting harder. Suddenly, the striker on the White team looked to have got free, only to be hacked down by a Yellow defender: Penalty! The striker picked himself up and smashed the ball past the keeper before running away from the screaming mob of his teammates into the corner of the pitch for the ubiquitious pile-on.

The Yellow team, clearly enraged by the penalty decision surrounded the referee, viciously berating him. As he tried to walk away, another guy in an orange vest(who we later learned was their Coach) came racing onto the pitch going completely wild. The next thing we know the police appear and people start running in all directions. For a moment it looks as though it could all turn nasty with the crowd getting caught up in the heat of the moment, but it quickly dies down and the Yellow Coach is marched away by the police.

We drove away unable to believe just how much excitement and adrenaline had been created over a local 5-a-side game. Clearly winning was every bit as important as playing beautiful football.