Preseason Trip to Brazil: The Brazilian Fervor and Style
Last Sunday, towards the end of my college team's preseason training trip to Brazil, we found ourselves practicing on a cramped, muddy pitch in the middle of a soccer compound that had fallen into disrepair. The conditions were a far cry from those we had enjoyed earlier in our trip at a soccer resort in the mountains oustide of Sao Paolo - a resort where American teams often stay and train during soccer trips to Brazil. The muddy pitch, on the other hand, is where the locals of Santos, a friendly Brazilian city by the sea, play pick-up soccer on the weekends.
Our training session was sharp but limited - puddles at midfield and in both goal mouths made it difficult to move the ball in any kind of large-sided game. Most of us spent passed the time complaining about the conditions and raising our arms in exasperation whenever a puddle swallowed a through ball. One of my friends lamented having to wash his cleats and dry them in the short time frame between the end of practice and our next game. You can imagine that our wet socks and cleats did wonders for the smell of the team bus as well.
All in all, not the most successful or enjoyable training session of the week. But while we were shying away from puddles and waiting for our coach to call a warm down, I noticed that a sizeable Brazilian crowd had gathered to watch us. I assumed they were more enamored with us being foreigners rather that our play that day, but the most striking characteristic of the crowd was how they were dressed. After all, most of them were on their way to join a game on one of the surrounding fields which were just as dingy as the one we were playing on. And they were all barefoot.
It wasn't a scene you see too often in the U.S. - a bleak, rainy Sunday morning with ill-equiped soccer players rushing to play on a barely playable surface. If it had been our home field for a regular season game, I'm not sure it would have been deemed playable. And we would be wearing 200 dollar boots on it. These guys thought it was playable without shoes.
We all hear stories of kids in South America playing soccer on the beach, with no shoes and a Coke can for a ball, but the comparison between Brazilian and American soccer was obvious that day. The Brazilians may not, in fact, they certainly do not, have the cushiest facilities or best equiptment, but they simply bleed soccer. They play inside and outside, in a decrepid gymnasium - like the one in which we had played futsal against the locals earlier in the week - or on a muddy training ground with stone walls crumbling in and hardly a patch of grass to play on.
Brazil is the best at soccer for the same reason that the U.S. is the best at basketball. Brazilian kids play in organized clubs with a healthy dose of impromptu competititions of the side. For example, we sqaured off against a team that lived and practiced at the resort I mentioned earlier. We tried but couldn't determine if these kids went to school - none of them spoke English and none of us knew Portugese - but it seems like they practice twice a day year round at the compound. When they aren't on the ball, many of them were jogging slowly but at great length around the training facility in order to ready themselves for the energetic Brazilian style. At night, young players flock to local gymnasiums to play futsal, a game that requires sharp touches and quick play. The next day, they do it all over again. It's not unlike the stories you hear of the top young basketball players coming out of New York City and Los Angeles, playing for top notch youth teams while also picking up individual skills and confidence in playground games.
And while parts of playground and organized hoops show through in every N.B.A. game, so too does the creativity of futsal and the organization and fitness of Brazilian club soccer find its way into the Brazilian soccer style. The best youth players in Brazil play for the developmental clubs of professional Brazilian teams. As in Europe, each professional club has a team at a variety of age groups with the hope that these young players will eventually produce for the parent club. Playing for these teams is a massive commitment of time and energy, greater than that which comes with playing for one of the top American youth clubs such as FC Delco, Sereno or F.C. Greater Boston. Practicing every day, all year round puts these kids in tip top shape. My teammates and I remarked that by playing every day of the year, the Brazilian soccer system doesn't allow its players to get out of shape, unlike most in American soccer who often gain and lose fitness throughout the year.
Along with their work rate, though, the top Brazilian teams are also soccer-savvy and well coached. Though individual defending is less of a priority there - this is no more obvious that in the professional league that has an up and down trademark and a habit of loose marking all over the pitch - the developmental clubs move with a collective shape that limits the exposure of poor individual defenders. Only one team that we played was dreadful at intelligently sending numbers forward. Most teams in Brazil are comfortable sending one fullback into every attack but the good teams make recovery runs for each other so as not to spring a leak on your conterattack. The strongest developmental clubs, however, have enough confidence on the ball to send two defenders forward at a time, knowing the unlikelyhood of one of their teammates turning the ball over.
That makes for a lot of Americans chasing a bunch of Brazilians, and the ball, around the field. Remember that chasing is not always wise. Indeed sometimes teams are better off packing themselves into their own defensive third and letting their oponents hold possession around midfield. Unfortunately, the checking of Brazilian strikers as well as the cutting runs of central Brazilian midfielders makes this difficult to do. The Brazilians are clinical atop the box, playing the ball into the feet of their strikers and running off of them. The strikers then delicately flick the ball on to a running midfielder who is able to beat the offsides trap (because this all happens so quickly, the defender on the back of the striker keeps the running midfielder onside).
You can't sit back and try to keep this in front of you. As a central midfielder, if you don't pressure their midfield then they can play the ball into the striker with ease and away they go. What's more, if an outside back rather than a central defender steps on the striker, he leaves a U-Haul-sized hole down the flank for a midfielder to play the ball to a wide player who can then have a go at goal or whip a cross into the area.
It can leave your head spinning just thinking about it, let alone trying to follow these fast (read: absurdly fast) players who never tire. And without much fatigue, their touch remains constant, as consistent and useful in the 80th minute as it is in the 8th minute. They blend the fitness and shape of organized soccer with the flare and creativity of playground pick-up games. And hard work is at the root of it all. That's why the deserve to be called the best in the world at the world's game.
Our training session was sharp but limited - puddles at midfield and in both goal mouths made it difficult to move the ball in any kind of large-sided game. Most of us spent passed the time complaining about the conditions and raising our arms in exasperation whenever a puddle swallowed a through ball. One of my friends lamented having to wash his cleats and dry them in the short time frame between the end of practice and our next game. You can imagine that our wet socks and cleats did wonders for the smell of the team bus as well.
All in all, not the most successful or enjoyable training session of the week. But while we were shying away from puddles and waiting for our coach to call a warm down, I noticed that a sizeable Brazilian crowd had gathered to watch us. I assumed they were more enamored with us being foreigners rather that our play that day, but the most striking characteristic of the crowd was how they were dressed. After all, most of them were on their way to join a game on one of the surrounding fields which were just as dingy as the one we were playing on. And they were all barefoot.
It wasn't a scene you see too often in the U.S. - a bleak, rainy Sunday morning with ill-equiped soccer players rushing to play on a barely playable surface. If it had been our home field for a regular season game, I'm not sure it would have been deemed playable. And we would be wearing 200 dollar boots on it. These guys thought it was playable without shoes.
We all hear stories of kids in South America playing soccer on the beach, with no shoes and a Coke can for a ball, but the comparison between Brazilian and American soccer was obvious that day. The Brazilians may not, in fact, they certainly do not, have the cushiest facilities or best equiptment, but they simply bleed soccer. They play inside and outside, in a decrepid gymnasium - like the one in which we had played futsal against the locals earlier in the week - or on a muddy training ground with stone walls crumbling in and hardly a patch of grass to play on.
Brazil is the best at soccer for the same reason that the U.S. is the best at basketball. Brazilian kids play in organized clubs with a healthy dose of impromptu competititions of the side. For example, we sqaured off against a team that lived and practiced at the resort I mentioned earlier. We tried but couldn't determine if these kids went to school - none of them spoke English and none of us knew Portugese - but it seems like they practice twice a day year round at the compound. When they aren't on the ball, many of them were jogging slowly but at great length around the training facility in order to ready themselves for the energetic Brazilian style. At night, young players flock to local gymnasiums to play futsal, a game that requires sharp touches and quick play. The next day, they do it all over again. It's not unlike the stories you hear of the top young basketball players coming out of New York City and Los Angeles, playing for top notch youth teams while also picking up individual skills and confidence in playground games.
And while parts of playground and organized hoops show through in every N.B.A. game, so too does the creativity of futsal and the organization and fitness of Brazilian club soccer find its way into the Brazilian soccer style. The best youth players in Brazil play for the developmental clubs of professional Brazilian teams. As in Europe, each professional club has a team at a variety of age groups with the hope that these young players will eventually produce for the parent club. Playing for these teams is a massive commitment of time and energy, greater than that which comes with playing for one of the top American youth clubs such as FC Delco, Sereno or F.C. Greater Boston. Practicing every day, all year round puts these kids in tip top shape. My teammates and I remarked that by playing every day of the year, the Brazilian soccer system doesn't allow its players to get out of shape, unlike most in American soccer who often gain and lose fitness throughout the year.
Along with their work rate, though, the top Brazilian teams are also soccer-savvy and well coached. Though individual defending is less of a priority there - this is no more obvious that in the professional league that has an up and down trademark and a habit of loose marking all over the pitch - the developmental clubs move with a collective shape that limits the exposure of poor individual defenders. Only one team that we played was dreadful at intelligently sending numbers forward. Most teams in Brazil are comfortable sending one fullback into every attack but the good teams make recovery runs for each other so as not to spring a leak on your conterattack. The strongest developmental clubs, however, have enough confidence on the ball to send two defenders forward at a time, knowing the unlikelyhood of one of their teammates turning the ball over.
That makes for a lot of Americans chasing a bunch of Brazilians, and the ball, around the field. Remember that chasing is not always wise. Indeed sometimes teams are better off packing themselves into their own defensive third and letting their oponents hold possession around midfield. Unfortunately, the checking of Brazilian strikers as well as the cutting runs of central Brazilian midfielders makes this difficult to do. The Brazilians are clinical atop the box, playing the ball into the feet of their strikers and running off of them. The strikers then delicately flick the ball on to a running midfielder who is able to beat the offsides trap (because this all happens so quickly, the defender on the back of the striker keeps the running midfielder onside).
You can't sit back and try to keep this in front of you. As a central midfielder, if you don't pressure their midfield then they can play the ball into the striker with ease and away they go. What's more, if an outside back rather than a central defender steps on the striker, he leaves a U-Haul-sized hole down the flank for a midfielder to play the ball to a wide player who can then have a go at goal or whip a cross into the area.
It can leave your head spinning just thinking about it, let alone trying to follow these fast (read: absurdly fast) players who never tire. And without much fatigue, their touch remains constant, as consistent and useful in the 80th minute as it is in the 8th minute. They blend the fitness and shape of organized soccer with the flare and creativity of playground pick-up games. And hard work is at the root of it all. That's why the deserve to be called the best in the world at the world's game.
posted by jcanzo at 12:44 PM
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