Local knowledge key on road less travelled

Surviving planes, trains and stampedes armed only with a pen and stick of roll-on deodorant

The kindness of strangers has been a recurring and heart-warming theme of this gringo’s World Cup 2014.

A prime example: on Thursday morning I flew into Sao Paulo from Rio to cover that afternoon’s Uruguay-England game. The world’s third-largest city, Sao Paulo is simply jaw-droppingly, mind-bogglingly vast, so the thought of arriving in cold with just a couple of hours to spare before kick-off in which to try to negotiate the 25km from Congolhas Airport to the Sao Paulo Arena, was enough to keep me up the previous night poring over maps on the laptop.

A taxi from the airport all the way to the stadium was out of the question, not only for the cost involved but because Sao Paulo is notorious for the kind of nightmarish traffic gridlock which, according to local legend, can occasionally see a journey which should last 40 minutes take closer to four hours.

Unfortunately, there’s no metro link from the airport but, since I’m a Dubliner and therefore accustomed to the sort of deficit in joined-up thinking which can leave a city without joined-up tram lines, it didn’t seem the most daunting of tasks to work out an alternative three-pronged strategy: cab from the airport to the nearest metro at Sao Judas; subway from there to a hub called Se; and then change there to catch another train to the stadium.

On paper, at least, it looked reasonably doable.

And indeed all was going swimmingly up until the point where I presented myself at the first available ticket window in the subway and, summoning up my best Portuguese — which, of course, is indistinguishable from my worst — made bold to ask for ‘um bilhete to the Sao Paulo Arena, por favor’.

Approximately one minute later I was wishing the ground would open up and swallow me, as the woman behind the glass repeatedly and loudly sought to convey to me something that was clearly of some considerable import while I, about as comprehending as a duck, stared back helplessly as, all the while, a restless queue of natives whose impatience was growing increasingly audible, lengthened behind me.

It was then that a Brazilian couple, speaking perfect English, came to my rescue, explaining that I was being told I should alter my travel plan on the subway and change to a special match-day express train at another stop further down the line.

Which is precisely how it all panned out, ensuring that I did indeed get to the game on time, but not before I’d happily shared a stretch of the journey with my good Samaritans. I learned that, having spent some years in New York — he working construction, she teaching Portuguese — they had recently returned home to look after her elderly father, a man rejoicing in the evocative name of Rizinho.

“He sounds like he should be playing for Brazil,” I said, at which his daughter allowed herself a small smile before telling me a sad tale.

Her dad had been quite a useful footballer in his youth and still retains an all-consuming passion for the game. “Name any player and he’ll be able to tell you everything about him,” she said. Rizinho would only have been a nipper when Brazil last hosted the finals of the World Cup in 1950 and so had waited nearly all his life for the Mundial to return to his native land. Beside himself with excitement at the prospect of this month’s fiesta, he had even invested in a state of the art home entertainment system and planned to spend these weeks in June and July cheering on his beloved selecao in front of his massive new television.

But all that changed just a few weeks ago when the 69-year-old began to feel unwell and doctors diagnosed a recurrence of a heart problem. The seriousness of his condition means that he will have to undergo open-heart surgery a week or so from now and, in the meantime — and on foot of strict medical advice — he has been officially barred from watching Brazil on the box for fear of what the tension and excitement might do to his fragile ticker.

Instead, when the national team is playing, the poor man sits quietly listening to music on headphones and, only after he has been informed of the result of the game, is he permitted to watch the highlights on his big screen.

In the light of hearing this quintessentially Brazilian tale, it strikes me that if there is any consolation to be gleaned from Brazil’s abysmal nil-all draw with Mexico earlier this week it’s that, even if Rezinho had defied doctors’ orders to cadge a sneaky look at the action, there wouldn’t have been much in it to disturb his equilibrium.

As it happened, I had watched that game in the clubhouse bar in Fluminense’s historic old ground in Rio, just around the corner from my lodgings in the Laranjeiras district of the city. If Brazil is football’s spiritual home, then Laranjeiras is the physical birthplace of the national team. This is where Brazil played their first home game, the first goal in their history being scored by a Fluminense player called Oswaldo Gomes.

And though even ‘Flu’ no longer play at the intimate ground — the Maracana is now their home from home — the traditional links with the national team persist through the currently hapless Fred as well as skipper Thiago Silva who, when he used to turn out for the ‘Tricolour’, was “the monster loved by the crowd” according to a photo caption in the dazzling, trophy-filled club museum.

Fluminense, formed in 1902, were the club of the Rio aristocracy, and that tradition of wealth and privilege is still writ large in the very fabric of the stadium, the gorgeous stained glass windows in its ballroom entirely in keeping with the general ambience of palatial, if now faded, grandeur. With its pitch backdropped by a tall, jagged, forested hill and the entrance to the ground itself located down a leafy side street off the main thoroughfare, Laranjeiras Stadium is a football ground of such beguiling charm and beauty as to make Craven Cottage or even the old Highbury look like exercises in brutal realism.

And so from the sublime to the ridiculous: the much talked about invasion of the media centre at the Maracana on Wednesday night by ticketless Chilean fans looking to bunk into their game against Spain. The moment I became aware that something was amiss was when I heard a sudden eruption of shrieks in various tongues and looked up from my desk to see panicked journalists running back into the big room at great speed from direction of the main entrance. They were clearly fleeing some unspeakable threat — but what? An armed maniac? Godzilla? Or, most terrifying of all — someone from an accounts department brandishing a dubious expenses claim?

All was revealed when a large number of red-shirted Chilean fans came barrelling in and proceeded to trundle aimlessly around the place in search of another exit — in the process, turning from hunter to quarry as a mob of photographers followed in hot pursuit — before getting trapped in a narrow corridor between the back of the stand and the side of the media marquee. It was in the ensuing crush in this confined space that a couple of sections of the temporary partition gave way, causing flat-screen TVs to crash down onto desks, as hacks frantically tried to save their laptops from certain doom.

It was, I must admit, a spectacular scene and — I can say this given that, thankfully, nobody was hurt — not at all lacking in comic value, with its miniature echoes of that great chaotic climax to Blazing Saddles.

Fifa, of course, took a rather dim view of the whole thing, as did the military police who finally arrived to take control of the situation, corralling the miscreants and marching them off in crocodile file with a view, apparently, to deporting them back to Santiago from whence they came.

But Fifa’s statement, which numbered those detained at 85 and made much of the fact that the invaders had failed in their bid “to make it to the seats”, was striking, I felt, for its failure to make any mention whatsoever that the heart of the action had been in the press room where, in the midst of the uproar, quite a few of my colleagues suffered the severe psychological distress of losing their place in the long queue for the buffet.

Ironically, security were extremely thorough in stopping the Irish Examiner correspondent’s apple, banana and umbrella from gaining entrance to the media centre in Sao Paulo. All had to be taken out of my laptop bag and handed over. There was even a brief debate among the staff as to whether it might pose a substantial threat to national security if I were to be allowed keep my roll-on underarm deodorant. (Yes, I’m a classy kind of guy).

But at this, like the World Cup refs with their white foam spray, I was determined to draw a line.

“I’m staying overnight in your fine city and I don’t want to stink the place out,” I declared, “like your national team did against Mexico.”

Actually, I only thought of the last bit afterwards but you’ll be pleased to hear that my firm stand prevailed. As no doubt were the people with whom I again had to share a jam-packed metro the next morning.

By any measure then, it’s been 10 days of drama and excitement and shocks and upsets here in Brazil.

And, you know, the old football hasn’t been too shabby either.