Sport Defeats Pernambuco's Other Canada

Various supporters’ groups took busses, a rumored twelve busses in all, to Caruaru today. I was invited to eat lunch at a once-elite club with one of the club’s directores, so I went to rub shoulders with the semi-important (which makes me almost special) rather than take the bus to the game. It’s just as well that I didn’t go, because I might have ended up too drunk to see straight, and that would have affected my ability to describe the game and I would have ended up writing something like Nelson Rodrigues. Who is a great writer, so maybe I should have gone and done just that. Well, I won’t have a hangover tomorrow but neither will this win any awards, so I guess we can call it not particularly even.

The director of the club had to leave to attend some sort of emergency, but there I was, so I ate lunch at the club. It was expensive, slow to arrive, and not very good. The filet mignon flambéed in cognac was unpleasantly bitter and the less said about the chicken the better. Dinner’s pork chops simmered in a mango-rum sauce were a vast improvement.

After that horrible lunch I had hoped that Sport would save my afternoon, and Guto’s goal three minutes into the match seemed to confirm my optimism. Unfortunately, the game calmed down to a boring equilibrium in which Sport may have created a few more chances but neither team excited the imagination. Had I been so drunk I was seeing double I would probably be writing something more interesting, but unfortunately I saw the whole game.

Paulo Baier is very good. So are Ciro, Sandro Goiano, and Sport’s central defenders Durval, Igor, and César. Hamilton still has a lot of trouble passing the ball to his teammates, but he does very well when he doesn’t have the ball. Dutra is good. Sidny started because Nelsinho didn’t like the way Jonas played. I wouldn’t be surprised if Jonas plays again on Wednesday, because Sidny was terrible. This continues to be the team’s biggest problem. Guto scored a nice goal after a spectacular pass from Sandro Goiano, but was otherwise anonymous.


Porto was alright, but none of their players stood out This was a game that Sport should have won far more easily. Sport spent the entire game in a 3-5-2, which annoyed the supporters but got the job done. It may be that Nelsinho thinks that without any help at all from the right fullback and without a proper partner for Ciro it is better to bet on the defense. His record since arriving in Recife speaks for itself, so I’ll enjoy the three point lead over Porto, and hope that a decent right fullback arrives soon.