ballet
It will soon be Brazil’s second most popular sport … and it’s not entirely dissimilar to the first. Alex Bellos heads for Rio’s beaches to uncover the burgeoning cult of futevolei
One of the most romantic myths about Rio de Janeiro is that its famous beaches are full of barefoot urchins dazzling passers-by with top-class football. In fact, this is about as accurate as the belief that all those less sportingly gifted are waiting at street corners ready to mug you.
When you survey the golden lengths of Ipanema and Copacabana during the day you will realise why. They are too full of Brazilian sun-worshippers in Speedo trunks or G-string bikinis for some squirty future Ronaldo to put down coats, or rather flip- flops, for goalposts.
Instead, the football crazy have been relegated to the more socially acceptable beach volleyball courts that fringe the beaches, where they play a recently invented game that uses ball skills and doesn’t interfere with bathers. Put a Brazilian in a straitjacket and he or she will probably still manage to invent a game that uses a football.
In these sandy arenas foot-volley, or futevolei (pronounced footchi-volay), is the plat du jour. It is as easy to describe as it is difficult to play -beach volleyball played with football rules. You can only use your feet, chest and head to knock the ball over the net.
The minimum ball-control skills that are needed are breathtaking. A player needs to be as comfortable doing a bicycle kick, placing a ball to an exact spot on the other side, as he or she is chesting a shot from mid-air to a team-mate 2m away. Not easy at all.
You can watch a game of futevolei for hours and be continuously amazed by the technique. You might have thought it would be a game of serve and a few hits, but instead -possibly because there is no option to smash – the rallies last longer than in volleyball.
It is like watching the best things about South American football – the balance, the magic touches, the agility, the ballet – condensed into a few square metres. Even if an episode of Baywatch was being filmed nearby you wouldn’t be able to keep your eyes off the ball.
But within Brazilian culture, futevolei is much more than messing around on the beach. It is both a showcase for footballing celebrities and a national advert for Rio’s sex- and-sun mentality.
Romario and Edmundo are the two most famous futevolei aficionados and, when they are in town, you can catch them playing with their mates on the nouveau riche beach of Barra de Tijuca.
Both players are Rio natives and are as well known locally for their womanising and partying as they are for their sporting achievements. They have helped turn futevolei into a symbol of Rio’s vain, lawless, beach-bum culture.
Indeed, in its appeal to football’s rebels, futevolei has become the sport’s equivalent of smoking behind the bike sheds. Within the Brazilian squad, the futevolei players are known as the “bad boys”, a naughty quorum of petulant tearaways always sneaking off for a game (it goes without saying that the evangelical Christians Cesar Sampaio and Claudio Taffarel, as well as the famously hard-working Roberto Carlos, are not known to have ever played). You can almost write Romario’s recent history in terms of incidents involving futevolei. When playing for Valencia, in 1966, Romario’s happiness at the club was not helped by the reprimand he was given for playing illicitly on a Spanish beach during a rest day.
Back in Brazil, Romario has irritated several coaches – including Mario Zagallo and Zico – with his continual preference to be playing on the beach rather than doing proper training. And when the player -who has his own range of futevolei accessories – was dropped from this year’s World Cup squad it was no surprise that a few days later he was back playing his second favourite game – sticking up a metaphorical two fingers to the team. Some reports said the injury which kept Romario out of the World Cup was initially picked up on a futevolei court.
As a mark of how much his kickabouts are a local institution, a few weeks ago Romario made his first appearance in one of Brazil’s famous TV soap operas – playing futevolei.
Futevolei was born in Rio in the Sixties and even though it is now played all over Brazil, Rio’s beaches are still the hallowed sand, so to speak. Over the last decade it has grown in popularity, and of the hundreds of men and women that play it about a dozen are sponsored and well-known local celebrities.
The Rio futevolei federation was started only last year and the main Rio football clubs Flamengo, Vasco de Gama and Botafogo have already agreed to organise their own teams. “The aim is to have a proper league in the next few years,” says the federation’s technical director, Luiz “Dunga” Adnet.
The best futevolei players are not necessarily the best professional footballers because the two sports involve different skills. “In football when you receive a ball the aim is to kill it dead. In futevolei the aim is to pass it to your team-mate or hit it back over the net,” says Marcia Pinheiro, number one in the unofficial women’s rankings.
“But footballers learn skills from playing futevolei,” she adds, “like when you see Romario chesting a ball over a defender. That’s something he picked up on the beach.” The game is normally played two against two and the rules change only slightly for mixed doubles, in which men can only serve to men because of their stronger kick. The scoring is just like volleyball and the game is over at either 12 or 15 points.
Serving involves a beach ritual similar to a rugby player kicking up a turf mound from which to attempt a penalty – putting the ball (which is lighter and softer than a regular football) on a small sandy knoll and then kicking it over the net.
Futevolei is popular among women and the most-followed tournaments are the mixed doubles. It follows Brazil’s strong tradition of women’s football: the woman holding the world keepie-uppie record, for instance, is 19-year-old Milene Domingues, who managed 55E187 touches in nine hours and six minutes last December.
However, women are at a disadvantage. “For 80% of balls the men receive on their chests. It’s difficult for women to do that. We have to use our shoulders,” says Marcia, a full-time biologist who is sponsored by bikini company Bum Bum. But if judged purely in terms of skill, adds Dunga, the best women are on a par with the best men.