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.