Corinthians and Boca - Soccer

Sport Club Corinthians Paulista is the fourth more popular soccer club in the world. As they like to say there are 23 millions of religiously carved fans. Corinthians was founded in September 1910. Says the legend a group of working class lads met to create a team from the people and for the people.

Almost centenary, Corinthians or "Timão" (The Big Team), has won 4 Brazilian Leagues, 3 Brazilian Cups, 25 Paulista Tournaments, The Little World Cup of Venezuela in 1953 and the Fifa Club World Championship in 2000.

In numbers of fans Corinthians beats Flamengo in Brazil's Southeast region, the richer and most populous one, which surprisingly includes Flamengo's city, Rio de Janeiro. Corinthians also beats Flamengo among women (sorry!).

Beyond having tens of millions of fans, Corinthians and Boca's "hinchas" are relatively equal in the passion they stimulates in their legions. Corinthians' fans are the so called "fiéis", meaning the faithful. No need to comment about how much Bosteros love the Xeneize squad.

Domingos da Guia, El Diamante Negro o El Divino Maestro,
at Boca in 1935. He also played for Corinthians (1936 -1943).

Among other great worldly famous players Domingos da Guia, Garrincha, Rivelino, Rivaldo, Dida, Socrates, Hugo de Leon, Daniel Gonzalez, Gamarra, Marcelinho Carioca, Neto, Dunga, Viola, Carlito Tevez, Javier Mascherano, Edu, Sylvinho, Jô, Dida and Deco played in Corinthians.

Recently Tevez made history leading Corinthians for its fourth national title. He was also elected the best player of the 2005 Brazilian League. A couple years before he had lead Boca to their fourth Libertadores wearing Maradona's 10.

That said Tevez can be proud of being beloved at Sao Paulo and Buenos Aires at the same time. Boca Juniors "hinchada" is amazingly famous. Boca itself is a legend in South American and World soccer winning several times the Libertadores and many times the Toyota World Cup.

I am not gonna say much about Boca because this blog need to have a collaboration in the days to come from a real Xeneize, so you will hear from the expert.

The Xeneizes are as passionate as it gets. Plus, in national preference percentages Boca is the number one, amazing 40.4% of all Argentineans dress in blue and yellow. Together with Barcelona, Boca Juniors sponsors UNICEF.

Carlito dancing la cumbia.
He is the man at São Paulo and Buenos Aires alike!

In present days Ronaldo plays at Corinthians and Roman Riquelme leads the Boca. Corinthians just won the Brazilian Cup qualifying to the Libertadores 2010. Brazilian media says Corinthians will put together a Dream Team. Carlito's Corinthians was named the South American Real Madrid in 2005. Among others Tevez and Riquelme are cited as possible players for Corinthians now. In 2010 to celebrate its centenary Corinthians wants to conquer America as Boca did so many times. Let's wait and see.

Biggest in the World - The Planet More Popular Teams

Flamengo's President speaking at the
UN's Sport for Development and Peace Office last week.

Everybody wants to know who is the biggest soccer club in the world. There are many ways to measure that, such as the number of titles, the total revenues (I am sure we will talk about this soon), club associates, etc. For me it always made more sense to measure a soccer team size by the passion they inspire in their fans.

A Brazilian magazine focused on curious facts just made an interesting study. They developed a simple but credible methodology to estimate the number of fans of the biggest soccer clubs in the world. First step, listing the percentage of fans for the three big soccer clubs in each one of the eleven most important soccer tournaments in the planet. Second step, multiply the percentage of fans' preference by the correspondent population of each one of the 11 countries in the study.

Of course, by doing that you exclude the "out of country fans", penalizing globalized brands like the Manchester United, Liverpool, Barcelona, and Real Madrid. These teams are huge in people oriented markets such as China, India, Bangladesh, etc.

I love the food and they love the game!
But do they really play soccer down there?

On the other hand one can say that we are measuring real power since we all know that your soccer passion is determined by your own culture, and therefore most of your love is due to the territory you belong to, or in other words the place you live. It is ok to be in China and say that you are a Liverpool fan, but come on, what does that really mean?

No prejudice on that, India had soccer teams from at least a decade early than the Latin America. Actually the first soccer team outside England was born in India. The true is other than that, there is no much that Asians can argue about in terms of soccer.

Let's take a lok at the compiled list of the most popular soccer teams in the planet.

Flamengo is the number one, with 32.6 million fans, the second and third places are in Mexico, respectively Chivas and America. The third place goes back to Brazil, my own favorite: Sport Club Corinthians Paulista. If you carefully look for the list (available below), you will see that it reflects people's passion for the game.

That said a few of my own thoughts. Flamengo takes advantage of the so called "Radio Era" in the 1950s Brazil, where everybody get the radio news from Rio de Janeiro, the country's capital. That means that Flamengo's fans are all around the country, in places where people usually have two, or three teams, so they support their "hometown" club, plus Flamengo. Falmengo won one Libertadores in 1980 and one World Club Tournament (the Toyota Cup) beating Liverpool 3X0 in 1981. They also have five Brazilian League trophies and several Carioca Cups.

The second place Chivas (30.8 million fans) is a great team, don't take me wrong. As every Brazilian I have a love history with Guadalajara. But besides being popular, what does the Chivas achieve soccer-wise speaking, just few titles in the Mexican League, a franchise in the USA, and of course a lot of space in the media.

I take my hat for the Chivas Guadalajara.
Watch the video and you will know why!

America from Mexico city is the third one with 26.4 million fans. Personally, I have nothing good to say about it, so I will just skip it.

Now we get to Corinthians (23 million fans) and I want to make my point. But for that you have to wait until my next post!

List compiled by the Mundo Estranho Magazine (2008)

BRAZIL
Pesquisa Datafolha. 2007
1. Flamengo – 32.6 millions(17%)
2. Corinthians – 23 millions(12%)
3. São Paulo – 15.3 millions(8%)

ARGENTINA
Equis Investigación Social. 2006
1. Boca Juniors – 16.4 millions(40.4%)
2. River Plate – 13.2 millions(32.6%)
3. Independiente – 2.2 millions(5.5%)

SPAIN
Centro de Investigaciones Sociológicas. 2007
1. Real Madrid – 13.2 millions(32.7%)
2. Barcelona – 10.4 millions(25.7%)
3. Valencia – 2.1 millions(5.3%)

GERMANY
Sportfive (Agência de Marketing Esportivo). 2007
1. Bayern de Munique – 10.5 millions(12.8%)
2. Werder Bremen – 5.7 millions(6.9%)
3. Schalke 04 – 4.3 millions(5.2%)

ITALY
Instituto Demos-Eurisko. 2007
1. Juventus – 16.3 millions(28%)
2. Milan – 13.4 millions(23%)
3. Internazionale – 9.3 millions(16%)

JAPAN
Video Research Ltd.. 2006
1. Kashima Antlers – 12.3 millions(9.7%)
2. Gamba Osaka – 11.9 millions(9.4%)
3. Jubilo Iwata – 11.7 millions(9.2%)

MEXICO
Grupo Reforma. 2007
1. Chivas – 30.8 millions(28%)
2. América – 26.4 millions(24%)
3. Cruz Azul e Pumas – 13.2 millions(12%)

ENGLAND
Roy Morgan International. 2006
1. Manchester United – 4.2 millions(6.9%)
2. Liverpool – 3.1 millions(5.1%)
3. Arsenal – 2.6 millions(4.35%)

PORTUGAL
Liga Portuguesa de Futebol Profissional. 2003
1. Benfica – 4.1 millions(38.8%)
2. Porto – 2.6 millions(24.4%)
3. Sporting – 2.1 millions(20.2%)

FRANCE
Institut National de la Statistique et des Études Économiques (Insee). 2006
1. Olympique – 10.2 millions(16%)
2. Lyon – 9.6 millions(15%)
3. Paris Saint-Germain – 3.2 millions(5%)

NETHERLANDS
TNS-NIPO. 2007
1. Ajax – 4.3 millions(26%)
2. Feyenoord – 3.8 millions(23%)
3. PSV – 2.1 millions(13%)

Out of Battle - Ronaldo's Drama

Ronaldo's pain in 2000 when playing for Inter Milan.

The worse nightmare for a soccer player is being out of scene. This is specially true if you are injured. In that case there is absolutely nothing you can do to help your teamates, and that makes you feel cursed and powerless.

Just saying that because I have been playing always suffering some kind of, let's say, physical restriction. One knee is sorrow, my chins are bruised, and my muscles in pain. I just keeping on playing, tough. Just don't know if that is good or bad for my team.

The good (or bad) news are I am not the only one. Like myself, pretty much all soccer player in the world had done that before. We all did that at least a couple times in our soccer players life. What many of us never faced was a major surgery, or intermittent grave problems, like most of professional soccer players.

Summarizing I dare to say that our "amateur" pain is nothing comparable to the pain of professional players. In case of serious injuries they loose their job, their money and sometimes their life. Most of them with tens (or hundreds) of relatives and friends depending on their earnings, their body's health and their success on European soccer fields.

Ronaldo knows what I am talking about. At relatively young age his body asks for retirement. He had a great came back before, but this is exactly the problem, the kind of problem his knees suffer all the time are complex and they add exponentially to the odds that Ronaldo will disrupt his professional career.

His first surgery came earlier, on 1996, when he was just twenty years old and playing at the PSV in Holland. After that he had a seizure right before the 1998 World Cup Final against France. The French people celebrated their trophy in home, after a pious presentation of the team who were playing the best soccer until that moment. The picture above shows Ronaldo after breaking his right knee's tendon in April 12, 2000. Just last week he faced another drama, another major knee surgery, and at least 9 months out of play, if not retirement.

Ronaldo has nothing to prove, but I believe he still have much to do. Ronaldo is given to odd things, he was on the Simpsons, he played on the biggest soccer clubs on the planet, he is famous on all continents, and he is one of the first Nike's symbol soccer players.

Damn it Dude! He got a red card from Homer.

He is also the biggest scorer in the World Cup's history. He won every main soccer tournament in the Planet, besides a Libertadores and the Champions League. He won two World Cup titles, and he was three times elected Fifa's Best Player of the Year. So, there is no need to say that he is a champion.

He got to talk about retiring early last week, tough. As he said he wants to keep at least his dignity and two functional legs. Actually, Ronaldo fears having walking issues in the future, what is understandable after so many surgical interventions and problems.

Some people now link Ronaldo's knee issues with a problem that is hot in the American media now, the steroids scandal. The Brazilian Soccer Confederation just fired a doctor that said that his knees' problems have to do with steroids use. The doctor said that Ronaldo was injected with steroids during his time at the PSV Eindhoven in Holland.

I have no opinion about it, just that if you are so gifted like Ronaldo, and many of the baseball players involved in the steroids scandal, you have no need to use steroids. Besides that the trade off is clear: Slightly better years against highly short careers.

As many baseball players, Ronaldo's body transformation over the years was impressive. But now it seems that he paying the price for that (if really happened!).

All right, let's be positive and talk about good stuff. If Ronaldo cames back, we all will know that he is definitely shaped for success. I am crossing my fingers for that to happen, and I truly hope that he will keep shaking his index finger, like he does to celebrate his goals.

Does he used steroids? The finger says no, but Nike motto is: Just Do It!

Actually, many soccer players around the world are doing the same thing right now, to show him how much he is adored and admired. The idea came from Nike, Ronaldo's lifetime sponsor, but there is no way one can say that the players didn't like it, on the contrary they just loved it.

Me included. Due to my poor body condition I had a terrible game other day, and I also lost a penalty kick, first time ever in a game, if I recall correctly. Next time I hope I will be better and score the goals I lost. No doubt I will shake my index finger too.