Botafogo vs. Atlético Mineiro: When Brazil’s Footballing Family Feud Becomes a Global Soap Opera By the time the first whistle blows at Estádio Nilton Santos, the usual suspects—London, Madrid, Abu Dhabi—will be pretending to ignore the match. Their analysts, trained on Champions League spreadsheets and Gulf-state balance sheets, will sip flat lattes and mutter that…
Andrey Santos and the Global Assembly Line of Football Futures By our correspondent in the departure lounge of another “next big thing” The name Andrey Santos currently sits in football’s transfer inbox like a PDF marked “urgent—open only if you’re desperate to look visionary.” Chelsea bought him in January 2023 for a rumoured €12.5 million,…
The word “flamengo” is, strictly speaking, a typo—three errant keystrokes that turn the Portuguese “Flamengo” into something that looks like a Scandinavian death-metal band or the newest lifestyle disease. Yet the slip travels remarkably well. From the barrios of Rio to the betting shops of Manila, “flamengo” keeps popping up on screens, receipts, and hastily…
Botafogo vs. Mirassol: The Quiet Apocalypse of a Tuesday Night in Rio By Dave’s Locker International Desk If you squint hard enough—past the floodlights, past the cocaine-laced energy-drink sponsorship banners—you can almost see the geopolitical fault lines tremble beneath the Maracanã turf. Botafogo versus Mirassol, a mid-table Campeonato Carioca fixture that barely registers on the…
Atlético Mineiro vs Santos: A Dystopian Ballet in Black and White, Sponsored by Crypto RIO DE JANEIRO—As the planet queues politely for the next cataclysm—be it heat domes, supply-chain famines, or a new season of “The Crown”—Brazil has decided the most pressing matter is still twenty-two millionaires hoofing a ball under LED suns. Atlético Mineiro…
Fluminense vs Corinthians: A Glorious Waste of Human Potential on the Global Stage By D. Locke, International Correspondent RIO DE JANEIRO—Somewhere between the Atlantic’s salt haze and the Christ statue’s permanent shrug, two football clubs will tonight try to convince 65,000 sun-basted souls that the result actually matters. Fluminense, the Rio aristocrats who still iron…
Palmeiras vs Internacional: A Rumble in Brazil That Might Just Decide the Fate of Civilization (Or at Least the Weekend Mood of 215 Million People) RIO DE JANEIRO—When Palmeiras and Internacional jog onto the pitch at Allianz Parque this Sunday, the rest of the planet will be dutifully worrying about inflation, wars, and whatever new…
Corinthians vs. Athletico-PR: A Microcosm of the Planet’s Slow-Motion Meltdown By the time the ball is kicked on Sunday in São Paulo, the United Nations will still be debating whether “climate catastrophe” is too alarmist a term, another crypto-exchange will have “misplaced” a few hundred million dollars, and somewhere in the Pacific a container ship…
Fluminense vs Bahia: A Tiny Patch of Grass Becomes the World’s Most Honest Mirror RIO DE JANEIRO—On Saturday night the Maracanã will once again host Fluminense vs Bahia, two football clubs whose combined wage bill is less than a single week of Lionel Messi’s Parisian dry-cleaning allowance. Yet for 90 minutes plus whatever farcical stoppage…
