What we did on our honeymoon…and how I learnt to love Botafogo

Chris Sanderson

For most English people, Rio means sun, sand, Carmen Miranda hats and Sugar Loaf. Standing on the top of some dodgy biplane, flying over Corcovado, that kind of thing.

But for English football fans, it also conjures up images of a packed Maracana, obscenely skilled kids on Copa beach, attacking football and the most passionate fans on earth. Most people can tell you that their first international was played against Exeter City and we still harp on about John Barnes’s mazy dribble in 1984.

In short, Rio in particular – is the promised land of football, the kind of place you dream about when you’re trudging off to some far flung first division ground in the middle of an English winter to watch yet another goalless draw.

So there was only one real place for my wife and I to go on our honeymoon when we got married in September. We wanted to have a taste of carioca life and for me that meant only one thing – football.

The only thing was…which team to support? The natural choice for me was any team that wore blue and white, the same as my first love Birmingham City, but this was impossible in Rio.

Fluminese put me off as they seemed a bunch of toffs and had too much claret in their kit. Vasco do have a fantastic kit (these thing matter) but their chairman seemed is too much of a cretin for my liking.

Flamengo seemed to have all the right ingredients, namely working class support, a great history and Zico. In fact I picked it up one of their shirts in a cheapo sportshop in Birmingham years ago, and I was curious to see whether they’d picked up anymore championship stars than the three plastered on mine.

However there wasn’t much appeal in tagging on to the Brazilian Man Utd, and I’d also got a bit narked over the years with people asking me why I was wearing a QPR away top.

But the deciding factor was that it seemed that every other tourist supported them and that a fair proportion of their gates were made up of tourists like us, out on a trip to “experience” football, sandwiched in between a ride up Sugar Loaf and an evening at a Samba club. We wanted to meet the fans, smell the hot dogs, join in the singing, that kind of thing. 

So that left Fogo, who really appealed to me. Not because they are a great club with a history you simply can’t imagine, or because there really is something iconic about the badge. It’s more the fact that they are ridiculously superstitious, something all Birmingham fans can sympathise with.

It’s well known that St Andrews was built on a gypsy camp and a curse put on the ground when they were kicked off. There’s also apparently a gypsy’s horse buried under the penalty box in front of the Tilton – you can still see the bump.

Whether this accounts for 128 years of mediocrity is anyone’s guess. What is a fact that successive regimes down the years have tried almost everything to lift this curse. Well it’s been cheaper than investing in a half decent team anyway.

So we’ve seen crucifixes put up around the stands, players painting the soles of their boots red and even priests coming with and giving a few Hail Marys. All this came reached its logical conclusion when the then manager Barry Fry heard that the only way to lift the curse was to simultaneously piss in all four corners of the pitch, and remarkably he managed to do it. We were relegated that season.

So when I read that Fogo used to have a dog that urinated on players legs in the 1960s, the ridiculousness of it all appealed to me. As did the first Fogo fan I met, a carioca called Alex.

As we’d already planned to go see a game at the Caio Martins, I decided to don my Blues shirt in anticipation. I’d already had a number of cariocas (and bemused ex-pats) give me quizzical looks, but nothing prepared me for Alex. Within thirty seconds of us stepping out of our hotel in Arpoador, he approached us and asked me, if perfect English, whether I was wearing a Birmingham City shirt. Shocked, confused, but above all ecstatic that a carioca had even heard of my club, we engaged in the kind of anorak conversation football fans do the world over.

It turned out that Alex not only had an encyclopedic knowledge English league football, but knew in intimate detail the minutiae of Midlands football; for example that we’d sold a Brazilian, Marcelo, two years before, that Doug Ellis had made some £8 million out of the Villa and that the Wolves were definitely going down.

Now there’s few things as impressive as meeting someone who has an interest and knowledge of your club, but to have this from a carioca on Ipanema beach was plainly surreal.

So I then asked the obvious question of who he followed in England and the reply was as shocking as it was short.

“Walsall”

A carioca Saddler, who was also a Fogo fan. That was it – we were sold. We decided then that they were the team for us.

So off we went over to Niteroi to see them play Nautico on their last home game of the season. I still have that childhood thrill when I get close to a ground and the Caio Martins didn’t disappoint.  It might have two temporary stands and it might have had only 2,000 in there, but there was a warmth about the place that was tangible and real.

I go down St Andrews for a contradictory set of reasons. I love my club but hate the moods they put me in. I love the camaraderie of being born to follow an underachieving club, but also hate some of the meatheads who follow us.

But my first impression I had of Fogo when I entered the turnstiles was of love. Love of their history, love of their tradition but above all faith that despite their current situation, there’ll be a better tomorrow. You could almost imagine these same fans singing “Keep Right On.”

I loved the fact they had a gallery of their greats as you walked in. I loved the sign that proudly proclaimed the club to be one the of the world’s top ten club teams and I loved the fact that everything I imagined would be part of a Brazilian game – the drums, the passion, the anger - was there all around.

The game itself was also just as I had imagined it, with positive, attacking football from the off. Rob explained that although Fogo had already booked a place in the play offs, as it was there last game they were going to give a run out to a few fringe players and kids. All was looking well for that first play off game

They lost 2-1. All three goals were belters, there was little concept of defence and Alex, the keeper, simply didn’t have a clue. and a variety of hand gestures aimed at nobody in particular.

But none of this mattered. What did was the impression the club which perfectly encapsulated Rio’s warmth and contradictions

We left Rio a couple of days later but planned to return for that first play off game. We were lucky enough to be part of a full house of around 9,000, see 5 goals, and join in abusing the ref with complex set of hand gestures and berate some Paulistas behind us. All in a thunderstorm gave the game a peculiarly English feel.

Our honeymoon ended with me buying a Fogo shirt – not an easy task I can assure you, and bizarrely, more shops sold Leeds and Blackburn shirts than Fogo. The reaction it elicited I had when I wore it was amazing, provoking good natured insults, shock that an Englishman was wearing such a shirt or instant solidarity that only comes with those who follow the faith.

As we left Rio at the end of our honeymoon, I decided that it would be fitting to wear it one last time. The last reaction I had was from someone who approached me, curious to know why an Englishman was wearing something other than a Fla shirt. After trying to explain, he solemnly nodded his head and remarked that what I was wearing was a “beautiful thing”. Fogo for us, will always be just that.

Chris Sanderson.