Yes I know Champions league Liverpool played well, Ferguson should have put Nani and Tevez from the start, Arsenal could be out, Chelsea are having troubles...bla, bla, bla...but today I am going to talk about a game that changed my life. I am not talking about football in general, but about a particular game and a fantastic player. You see I have been playing this game since I was about 6 years old but I only really started watching the game in 1980, the old programme hosted by the late Brian Moore called "Big League Soccer", in fact when he died I felt like someone from the family died. He hosted it like a BBC documentary on some sophisticated subject (Actually football is sophisticated). Anyway this was the decade when England ruled the roost, it was interesting times because English clubs were really excellent.
Liverpool was like Darth Vader, a dark empire ruling the game. I always watched this programme and watched my favourite teams Manchester United and Aston Villa (I only dropped Villa in 1982) anyway in 1981 I got to watch my first Toyota Cup or Intercontinental Club Cup between Flamengo and Liverpool. I remember my uncle telling me watch out for the "White Pele" I just thought to myself who the hell is ever going to beat the evil empire. I hated the evil empire, but I thought this team called Flamengo was going to be beaten by this other team that also worshipped a freaking bird.
Anyway when I saw these players from Flamengo coming out of the dressing room, they looked freaking scary with their unique jerseys, most of them looked like Mick Jagger or some sort of rock star coming to perform at a concert.
When the game started my thoughts changed, What kind of game were these players from Flamengo playing? It was out of this world, it was music and dance, it was entertainment...it was joy, just to watch them play, Liverpool were taken apart. There was this player called Zico (White Pele) I think he was genetically engineered he was two or three steps ahead of everyone and had a hand in all the goals, but it was not just him, the whole Flamengo team ran riot Junior, Nunez and many others besides Zico.
I am going to put a video here two in-fact one is Zico's mastery (with a gladiator movie theme) and the other is a real life commentary of the game. The haunting sound of the horn I remember made that game even more surreal I remember thinking almost for the whole 90 minutes "are these guys real?" (the aliens from Flamengo). Well if it was surreal for me think how messed up the minds of the Liverpool players must have been, Souness said something really funny about Flamengo and that statement is embeded in the video.
Such pure skill and artistry had never been seen again it became an endangered species. That game however started me on a journey on how I trained, played and looked at football, I became a Brazilian at heart....Zico became my favourite player and the playmaker in me was born.
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