BEAUTIFUL CHAOS: The Socceroos and the 2014 World Cup Read online

  ‘Super favela’ Complexo do Alemão viewed from the multi-million dollar cable car.

  Fifteen minutes and six stops end and at the top the welcoming committee consists of police with guns that look like they’d bring down a plane. There’s also a skinny horse chewing on a rare patch of grass, kids playing football, and Conor Hartnett.

  Conor is talking to the kids in fluent Portuguese, which is impressive because he’s only been in the country for a little over 18 months. With ginger hair and a pale complexion that contradicts the tropical surrounds, he looks very much like an Irishman, a hunch confirmed when he switches from the local dialect and begins speaking with a strong County Cork accent. Conor has come to Rio via Sydney, where he worked for Westpac. One day – it was as instantaneous as that – he decided there was more to life than helping churn out billion-dollar profits, and he went looking for some real meaning. A quick search of volunteer programs around the world yielded his options, but a deep love of football left him with only one real choice – Brazil, and its favelas. So now he spends two days a week working in an education program with the kids of Alemão, which, yeah, has been ‘pacified’ by the UPP but still remains far removed from any postcard.

  UPP Police welcoming party at the top of Complexo do Alemão.

  ‘I work with a lady and she was recently in the car with her son, the police put a gun to her head and told her to get out because they assumed she’d robbed the car,’ Conor told me. ‘Her son was shot through the lung last year, her husband’s best friend was murdered, one of the children’s fathers beaten up, shot, put into a car and the car was burnt.’

  Just five days earlier, where less than 10 kilometres away Belgium played Russia at the Maracanã, violence reared its familiar head. Two suspected drug traffickers were killed after a shootout with police. And in a separate incident, a police officer was shot in the face after being surprised by a group of armed traffickers. These incidents were the rare cases – rare because they were reported. Conor knows of another recent incident where three kids died of smoke inhalation following a police raid. That one wasn’t reported.

  ‘They are the stories I’ve heard about, and I know about 1 per cent of what really goes on,’ he says with unfortunate honesty.

  Trouble taunts the children who live here. Their eyes tell you about hope, about the joy of being young, as they bound about, kicking a football. Flash haircuts are the norm, so too worn clothes held together by threads, and bare feet. One 10 year old I meet would love a pair of tennis shoes, because his feet ache. As he and his mates dance around with a football, it’s hard to ignore the spectacular and cruel view. To the west the Olympic Stadium is in full sight, a venue that is out of action at the moment. It was opened in 2007 but closed in 2013 after the ‘structural integrity’ of the roof was found to be sub-standard. Reports suggested if the wind gusted above 63 km/h, the whole thing could fly off. After spending $200 million building a dud, many more millions are now required to get it up to scratch so the other big sporting circus, the Olympics, can roll into town.

  ‘I was up here with some friends and these two little boys came over,’ says Conor. ‘I’m kneeling down pointing at it [the Maracanã] and they said to me in Portuguese, “I will never get a ticket”. The people up here are outgoing, friendly, very honest, but a lot of them have no sense of the outside world as they’ve never been outside of the favela. Most of them haven’t been to Copacabana. They are simple, honest people. Once they are your friend they are your friend for life. However, they face adversity like we couldn’t even imagine. Mortality rates are a lot higher, and you speak to someone 16 years of age and they have no chance of going to university so they have a sense of being marginalised from the rest of Rio. You’ll never see someone from here make the airport, let alone Bondi Beach.’

  Which is why they are ripe to be picked off by drug lords. They can have the happiest of childhoods, flying kites and showing off to tourists, unaware of Olympic Stadia with dodgy roofs, but many don’t have stable home lives. Parents are either desperately trying to make ends meet, or, more likely, trapped by drug addiction. The kids are on the periphery of a dangerous cycle, and when they reach a certain age, it only takes one slip, one weak moment, for them to succumb.

  Police and the army charging in to clean up the joint sounds like the solution. Conor Hartnett knows otherwise.

  ‘When the UPP drove the bad guys out, they actually gave them a heads-up that they were coming! The bad guys had time to get out of town. Then guys from other pacified favelas came here. Before, they knew the drug dealers because they grew up with them, they had some respect for them. Now, there are other dealers from other favelas who they don’t know.’

  The stories and the sights depress the soul, which is further crushed upon realising this is just one among thousands like it in Brazil. In Rio alone, all around the distinctive, astonishing Rio landscape, there are these pockets of communities nestled into the hillsides. Where there’s a slope, invariably there’s a favela, even four blocks back from Copacabana Beach, where every Friday night there’s a ripping street party.

  Complexo do Alemão is not the type of place to hang around after dark. As the sun dips below the horizon, Conor advises it’s best to board the cable car to ride back over the concrete jungle, but not before another disheartening fact. The cable car cost $140 million to build. All that money to take people over an area with no hospitals and impoverished schools. There is one part that stands out: a youth centre, all shiny and new with a running track, swimming pool and nice, half-size football pitch.

  ‘That’s just for the “brochure” to mean something is happening here,’ says Conor.

  Just as well then my tour guide’s next stop is a place where faith in humanity can be restored. Thankfully, not all favelas are like Alemão.

  A dirt football pitch at Complexo do Alemão.

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  The main square of Barreira do Vasco is alive – bursting with energy and wonderfully organised chaos. The Friday night market is a bustling epicentre of trade, with street food and football shirts available in equal abundance. Across the road is Estádio São Januário, home to Vasco da Gama, one of Rio’s four big clubs along with Fluminense, Flamengo and Botafogo. It’s an ageing structure, highlighted by an architectural wonder of a main entrance, built in the 1920s with all the hallmarks of an era of grandiose. The club has a rich history, with some of Brazil’s best playing here, like Romario and Ademir, Golden Boot winner at the 1950 World Cup. Sadly, Vasco the football club isn’t so grand these days, playing out of the second division. Even with Uruguay training there tonight for a World Cup knockout match, the focus instead is on a caged concrete court.

  There is one king, and one king only – Carlao. He was a goalkeeper in Brazil’s professional leagues and has the type of frame that would make you think about challenging for a cross after it happened, not before. Big, but not imposing – that latter word sums up his standing in the favela he calls home. Carlao is one of the main reasons Barreira do Vasco is a place its inhabitants are happy to call home. He runs a football program for the local kids, taking away some of what is so dangerous – idle time roaming the streets.

  There are some simple rules – the court needs to be clean before anyone plays football, you have to go to school when you’re not here, listen to what Carlao says, and have fun. The program is split into age groups and each age group has two hours, either 9 am–11 am, 1 pm–3 pm or 6 pm–8 pm from Monday to Thursday. Most Fridays, pick-up games are organised with kids from other favelas. In this place, everyone knows Carlao, and he knows everyone.

  ‘I live here so I am worried about the kids,’ he says through a translator. ‘I’ve worked for eight years with these kids from six to 14 years and there are a lot of good things here, but there are bad things too so this project is to help kids not do those bad things. Using sport and education, doing eight hours a day, part of it is sport, the other part is talking to the kids, and the conversation i
s important because these kids don’t have any conversation at home. This is the most important thing in my life, because I’ve lived through a lot of bad days, so I don’t want these kids to have bad days like that.’

  Conor, the Irish favela volunteer who arrived in Rio via Sydney, is happy too because this is where he spends the balance of his time, helping Carlao run the program. He loves his time in Barreira do Vasco, not least because of the man he works with.

  ‘This guy gets paid AUD$300 a month,’ Conor tells me. ‘Messi gets paid $300,000 a week. Carlao’s a legend. I’ve been in Brazil for a while and I’ve never met a human being anywhere close to him. They [the kids] are learning life skills off him and he’s a fantastic father figure to them. I can’t stress enough the respect he commands in the community.’

  Sure, one day Carlao would love to produce a player good enough to play for Vasco da Gama. His nephew is showing real promise, though a few nights prior, he sent everyone into a mild panic by cutting his foot, his blood staining the court. Well, almost everyone went into a mild panic. Carlao didn’t flinch, just organised for the foot to be stitched, told his nephew to have a week off, and everyone else to calm down. They did. Carlao teaches the kids to respect others and, more importantly, themselves. It’s one of the pillars of learning that might one day hold their lives together.

  Pacification by the UPP of Barreira do Vasco has curbed the brutal street violence, and unlike Alemão, the sense of danger is not apparent: it’s been replaced by a sense of community. The hive of activity in the main square on a Friday night exemplifies the point. Drugs are still rife. Some parents forget they have kids which means the kids don’t remember they have parents, and are sometimes out on the court long after Carlao is gone, playing until 3 am.

  Sure enough, as we fail in an attempt to finish our meal, two minutes later some kids ask for the leftovers, which they devour in seconds.

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  The next day Carlao takes us on a tour of his streets, through the maze of concrete alleyways lightly kissed by the sun that squeezes through the top of two- and three-storey dwellings. They aren’t mansions – each floor is home to another family. One elderly man tends his garden, six ferns in pots, a rare sighting of greenery though colour is abundant, streamers and flags to celebrate the World Cup hang from the plethora of wires above. Those self-installed wires provide electricity to whomever needs it. Regulation? Not here.

  Carlao eventually brings us to the home of Lucas, a seven year old he’s teaching to be a goalkeeper. In the tiny dwelling there is a queen-sized bed, a TV and a small kitchen. That’s it. Lucas has five brothers, a mother and, luckily for him, his mum’s boyfriend, a gentle man who has a crucial duty, given no-one knows where the real dad is.

  A street in Barreira do Vasco.

  Lucas and his family haven’t been here that long and when they arrived there was nowhere to live. So strangers who would become friends from the favela cobbled together enough materials to throw up a house, though the roof is not the best. When it rains, it leaks badly. Still, at least they didn’t spend $200 million finding this out. They are cramped but the kids are undeniably happy, Lucas is rarely without a smile on his face, especially when he explains the mayhem of watching Brazil play football.

  ‘I love it so much, we jump around and yell out Brasil, Brasil!’ His face lights up with the thought, an expression to warm the coldest of hearts. This kid has nothing and life will only get harder, yet spending time with Carlao may just give him a chance most people take for granted.

  Haphazard electrical wiring in Barreira do Vasco.

  Just like any other community, there are differing living standards within a favela. In most of Australia it is luxury, good, liveable, bad. Here it is liveable, bad, worse, unthinkable. Unthinkable to us, yet for Lucas, it may as well be a palace. Good stories exist side by side with sad ones, which for the most part stay inside the bubble. Most who live outside favelas are immune to it all.

  ‘Ninety-nine per cent of Brazilians who aren’t from a favela haven’t been to one, and they look at you with a mix of shock and disgust as to why you would go to one,’ explains Conor. ‘Last week at the airport I met a lady from Belo Horizonte. I mentioned I work in a favela and she said, “Really, I couldn’t even imagine what it is like”. They think it’s a different world, they marginalise them and turn a blind eye.’

  Plenty exasperates Conor, like how the Olympics will see a mass development in the Barra da Tijuca area on the other side of town, an area which needs fixing the least. Why not rejuvenate this area? Too hard. The government won these events to show Brazil off to the world, and they certainly don’t want to be showing off an area they are ashamed of. Which is a crime in itself because human spirit, the spine of any society, is as real here as anywhere. That spirit burns brightest in people like Conor and kings like Carlao.

  6.

  SPAIN PAIN

  ‘When you strike at a king, you must kill him.’

  Ralph Waldo Emerson, 1803–82

  If only it were true that the royals of modern football, Spain, had moved onto the next life, the Socceroos might have had a chance. If only it were true ‘tiki-taka’ – the obsession with possession that strangles opponents – had been read its last rights, the Socceroos might have had a chance. If only it were true a generation of once-in-a-lifetime players were well beyond anything close to their best, the Socceroos might have had a chance. If only. The Spanish kings had been struck out of the World Cup by the Netherlands and Chile, but they were not dead. They lived for one more day in Curitiba. After that, the obituaries, legacies and the futures of the architects could be debated. But not before the Socceroos were taught a brutal lesson. It’s one thing to be a team that is noticed. Becoming one that is feared is an entirely different matter.

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  Alex Wilkinson’s mum watching the team warm up ahead of the game against Spain.

  The 2014 World Cup is not even two games old when a new world order is confirmed. Spain cannot get out of Group B and the match with Australia is to decide who will finish third and fourth in the Group. Third and fourth: the two most meaningless numbers in any football tournament. The abdication was no bloody coup or massacre, though one goal scored and seven conceded suggests otherwise. If one of the many impish Spanish wizards, David Silva, had buried his chance to make it 2-0 against the Dutch late in the first half, the World Cup would have changed for everybody. If Sergio Busquets, usually so dependable for Barcelona, had buried his open goal chance at 0-2 against Chile, the World Cup had the potential to change for everybody. There’s that little word that lets the imagination fill itself with hope or regret. If.

  Along the path to the three recent major trophies Spain won, the rest of the world was left to ponder those two little letters. Now it is Spain’s turn to share in the experience, though the signs were there 12 months ago that the end was nigh. Brazil demolished them in the final of the 2013 Confederations Cup, the tournament FIFA puts on to ‘test’ the host nation ahead of a World Cup, while also rather conveniently raking in large sums of money for what really is a pointless exercise in relation to other dates in the crowded football calendar.

  The 3-0 victory for the home side in front of a euphoric Maracanã was built on superb counter-attacking fluency, catching the Spanish with their fuel gauge touching empty after another arduous European season. Every single player, apart from goalkeeper, Iker Casillas, had come off another 40-plus game stint for their clubs (including Fernando Torres and Juan Mata with 64 each for Chelsea). That’s off the back of previous long campaigns and after just one summer off (2011) since 2007 due to national team tournaments. They are superbly conditioned athletes, given every single chance of being medically and mentally prepared to be able to perform. Machines, though, they are not. The human mind, body and spirit can only take so much.

  Now for one last match in an almost unrivalled era of dominance, unusual in more way than one. For the first time in the history of the World Cup, da
ting back to its first appearance in 1934, Spain cannot win the main prize. In every one of their 58 previous World Cup games, the opportunity has been there to win, progress or stay in the tournament. Now what? All of a sudden they are at the crossroads, quite literally as far as history is concerned.

  Curitiba, venue for this unique situation, is itself a distinctive metropolis compared to other Brazilian cities. Midway between Rio to the north and Port Alegre to the south, it is filled with European influence and architecture, the town planned with a sense of purpose, rather than the notion of ‘where there is space build it’ that exists elsewhere. The old town is a sea of people every Sunday for the markets where a regular meeting spot is the fountain of a horse head spewing water.

  The horse-head fountain in the Curitiba main square.

  Though an Italian influence is strong, it is not an ode to the Godfather, rather its own history when Gauchos – South American cowboys – drove their cattle from up from the south and stopped midway in Curitiba. It is all very cultured until you notice the fully grown man standing on the edge of the fountain in a Spiderman suit acting as a street statue. Euro sophistication aside, this is still Brazil. A streak of unpredictability is never far from any scene.

  Spiderman hanging out by the horse-head fountain in the Curitiba main square.

  And so it is on match morning. Castelo do Batel is a magnificent palace-style building in the heart of the city. The opulent sandstone edifice – with its huge windows, high ceilings and perfect gardens – was modelled on those found in the South of France. The original owner, a wealthy 1920s coffee grower, wanted a comfortable residence. He succeeded. He could not have imagined what would be happening on his turf, nearly 100 years later.