Welcome to the Copinha, home of The Wall, Rudigullithi and the future of Brazilian football
For the new season, MirrorFootball is teaming up with some of the blogosphere's best new writers to bring you even more great football reads every single day.
Saturday is South America day, and here's I Like Football Me 's Euan Marshall with his take on the week's big issues in the region.
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Football is never away for very long in Brazil. In the beginning of December as the final whistle sounded at the end of a thrilling 2011 Brazilian championship, fans were trying to work out what they would do with their weekends given that the football was finished. They didn’t have to wait very long though, as just under a month later the 2012 season got kicked off with the now-traditional curtain raiser, the Copa Sao Paulo.
The Copa Sao Paulo - or the Copinha (‘little cup') for short - is a one month long youth tournament featuring teams from all over Brazil taking part all around the state of Sao Paulo. It has been taking place every year in January since 1969, with the final always taking place on the state holiday of the 25th January, the anniversary of the city of Sao Paulo.
Youth football is taken very seriously in Brazil, and the Copinha is the highlight of the youth calendar, as with several games shown on live television, youngsters get a great chance to make a name for themselves at an early age.
A huge array of Brazilian stars got their big breaks from playing in the Copinha, international stars like Rivaldo, Falcao, Kaka, Djalminha and Robinho are some of the names who made big impressions. More recently, Santos’ duo of Neymar and Paulo Henrique Ganso excited viewers in 2009, and Sao Paulo’s side with Casemiro and Lucas Moura strolled to the title in 2010.
This year’s tournament is made up of a staggering 96 teams, split up into 24 groups of four teams. Each group is hosted in a different city around the inland of Sao Paulo state, and each team plays each other once in the group, with the 24 group winners and 8 best runners-up progressing to the knockout phase.
In the group phase, matches are often very one sided, with the top teams of the nation often facing much, much weaker clubs. For example, on Wednesday, Corinthians beat Santos de Paraiba 9-0, while Sao Paulo FC put ten past Palmas, a tiny club from the northern state of Tocantins. The competition really starts to heat up by the time we reach the knockout phase however, and that’s where the really promising stars show their worth.
There are some exciting names to look out for in this year’s tournament, and thanks to Brazil’s continued success in international youth tournaments, we know some of these players already. Plenty has been made about young Santos striker Victor Andrade, the 16 year old who is already the subject of a release fee clause of over €50million. Victor is super-fast and very talented with the ball at his feet, the comparisons with Neymar are inevitable, but in my opinion he has the attributes to be a more effective version of fellow Santos graduate Robinho.
A little older, but arguably just as dangerous going forward, Sao Paulo’s 18 year old striker Ademilson looks like he has all of the potential to become a truly great number nine. Strong, good in the air, and with a thunderous strike, he was the top scorer in the recent u-17 Sao Paulo state championship, and he has already laid his claim to become the Copinha top scorer, bagging a hat-trick in Sao Paulo’s opening game.
Another name that has been thrown around a lot is that of Flamengo’s Mattheus, but more for his parentage than his ability. You will know Mattheus as the baby that sparked the famous ‘rocking the cradle’ celebration from his father Bebeto during the 1994 World Cup. Sorry for making you all feel terribly old there. Mattheus is a left sided midfielder, who has a very different style to that of his father, he prefers to get his foot on the ball, look up and pick out passes.
Furthermore, as you may know Brazilian football is the home of hilarious nicknames, and players like Kaka, Pato (the duck), Ganso (the goose) are better known by these than their given Christian names. The Copinha is always full of these superb sobriquets, from Flamengo’s aptly named defensive midfielder Muralha (the wall) to more confusing ones like Café (coffee) and Feijao (beans).
The other type of name you find in Brazilian football is players who are named after celebrities, for example, Maicon was reportedly named after Hollywood actor Michael Douglas. Throughout the Brazilian leagues there are plenty of John Lennons, a squad-full of Michael Jacksons, and there is even a Mahatma Gandhi Pires.
The Copinha has brought a couple of new gems to this list as well, like Americano’s midfielder Roberto Baggio, and Fluminense’s barely believable Rudigullithi (named after Dutch legend Ruud Gullit…).
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Follow @euanmarshall on Twitter and at I Like Football Me .
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