South American football is like ice hockey on grass, only more brutal (with video evidence)
Action from Fluminense of Brazil v Cerro of Paraguay in the second leg of their Copa Sudamericana semi-final:
Fluminense won 2-1 (3-1 on aggregate), thanks to two dramatic goals in injury time, to reach the Copa final.
The late goals sparked this tremendously entertaining mass brawl, which featured a spectacularly inciteful taunt (38 secs in) and a fair few Brazilian military police.
It’s quite a tear-up. Everywhere you look, there are players who seem to be saying, “Come on then, who wants some?!” Indeed, the poor cameraman doesn’t know who to follow. Just imagine the media outcry if this happened between Man Utd and Liverpool, say. We’d all be calling for lifetime bans and prison sentences.
After the game, Fluminense captain Fred (the former Lyon striker) called his team’s opponents a “marginal bunch”, which I take as meaning “a bunch of fighty mentalists”.
NOTE: In South America, they seem to favour the flying kick, where in England it’s all about the arms – windmilling in, to be specific.
In a word: yipes!