Kevin's Blog

Visited a small club in a favela with about 60,000 residents. The club has 350 kids who come from very poor homes. We watched U10s train and then two matches: U17s and U15s. We noticed several of the U15s walk onto the field in their socks where they met up with some of the U17s who had just finished their game. —They had to exchange cleats because the kids don’t have their own.— Wow, makes you think.

We gave out some Rockledge Soccer Club jerseys and the kids loved them. The coach collected the jerseys – he will use them as uniforms and training colors.

Also enjoyed the pickup futsal. No adults, some with shoes, some barefoot. But very spirited and skillful.

Went back to Botafogo today to sit in on a coaching symposium given by STFP – Sindicate dos Treinadoreo De Futebol Profissional do Estado do Rio De Janeiro. The class included 8 students from Angola. We enjoyed comparing this course with how our American courses are presented. We also had the chance to give out some of our jerseys to the kids playing futsal at the camp.

After lunch, we had the afternoon off and visited the Tijuca Forest National Park where “Christ the Redeemer” or Cristo Redentor is located. Cristo Redentor is the largest Art Deco statue in the world completed in 1931 with a height of 98 feet (30m). The base of the statue is located on the peak of Corcovado mountain at 2300′ with amazing views overlooking Ipanema Beach, Copacabana Beach and the Maracaña.

Spent the day with the Botafogo Football Club. Their headquarters are in the Botafogo neighborhood very near Copacabana while their training grounds are at the “almost newly completed” João Havelange Olympic Stadium. This new stadium with construction started in 2007 will hold the opening ceremony, field & track and closing ceremony for the 2016 Olympics.

And Cristo Redentor (Christ the Redeemer) can be seen from everywhere in Rio.

We started early today driving an hour north of Rio De Janeiro to the training grounds of Fluminense. It’s a large compound with clubhouse, dorms, several practice fields, a stadium field, grounds and maintenance buildings and a very large guest lodge.

We were brought out in the fields to meet with their coaches and watch their training sessions for the U19s, U17s and U15s. Watched patterns with the 15s for the classic Brasillian up, back, over and serve – all performed 1-touch. 17s worked on small group possession and 19s played 7v7 in one team’s defensive 1/3.

The club makes a living by identifying, building and selling players. We were given a 1-1/2 hour powerpoint presentation on their science of player identification and how they track the biological age of their players so that they don’t miss late bloomers. The presentation in Portuguese with an interpreter was excellent. A lot of discussion on pre-puberty, puberty and post-puberty traits and how to protect the late blooming player.

Some of the more interesting science is their use of monitoring pupil dilation given visual stimuli as an indicator of players’ speed of problem solving. Really fascinating. Lots of other testing to predict the players’ mature height and weight. Their annual club expense is something like US$4M. But one elite player can return the club over US$5M.

We got very lucky and picked up some tickets for another game at Estadio do Maracaña. The home team Vasco De Gama played Nautica. I enjoyed this game more than yesterday’s. Vasco played a more thoughtful game with much more midfield play. They played a 4-2-3-1 with a superb holding midfielder from the Argentine national team. Vasco won 2-0. Crowd was intense with 55,000 attending. This was much more than last nights game with 40,000.