...must be me, at least when it comes to activities involving footballs. And there are a lot of those over here. Brazil is all about football. In general, I would almost dare to claim that I’m quite all right with balls as long as I can use my hands. (To clarify that last sentence; that would be canoe polo balls when I sit in my kayak, and nothing else.) However, as soon as my feet are supposed to be part of the action, I’m lost, and I mean really lost. I think even the horse fanatic girls in my primary school class beat my personal best of 11 when it came to juggle a football on our knees. Only thing I did quite well on the football field was the sideline throws, or possibly running up and down the field to make the opponents tired. Preferably, always with the ball as far away from me as possible.
Ok, side tracking here, back to Brazil. If you walk along the beaches here, there are people with footballs everywhere. You’ve mainly got these groups of boys of all ages (they might be men off the beach, but with a football - still boys), standing in a circle just by the water trying to keep the ball alive. And that’s definitely impressive enough for me. I can get totally mesmerized by it and catch myself counting how far they would get sometimes. Probably looks kind of silly, since I’m the only person in the near vicinity playing a ‘one, two, three, freeze’ game with myself when I see a new football circle. And bare in mind, I don’t even need to put any effort whatsoever in to keep my focus off the tanned abs. It’s the football only…one, two, …, 57, 58, …
But (there’s always a ‘but’), there’s something even better than football in a circle. Just like canoe polo, dart orienteering and under water knitting, you can make a combination sport out of football as well. And to blow me off my feet, you’ll combine it with beach volleyball. Keeping in mind, that I also quite admire the skills of playing volleyball with only two players a side, this beach-volleyball-football thing is unbelievable. I have no idea how they manage to play that sport, absolutely great…and very impressive.
New Years Eve tomorrow and Copacabana has been getting ready for days now. Scaffolding being put up and art works fine tuned in the sand. The buzz is about some 2 million people or so, which is probably true. The rumours about U2 coming to play on the beach is probably not though.
