The Hindu : Brazil celebration turns ugly

Online edition of India's National Newspaper
Friday, Jul 05, 2002

Sport

Sport - Football

Brazil celebration turns ugly

Rio De Janeiro July 4 . Fans threw rocks at a bus carrying members of Brazil's World Cup championship team on Wednesday after the players cut short a victory parade.

The tour celebrating Brazil's unprecedented fifth World Cup was hours behind schedule when players decided to return to the airport at around 2:00 a.m. in Botafogo, one beach short of the parade's final destination, Copacabana.

The decision left thousands of fans who had been waiting for as long as 11 hours disappointed and angry.

Coach Luiz Felipe Scolari and team captain Cafu explained to the fans that the players were tired.

But after the players stepped off the trucks they had been on and boarded a bus back to the airport, angry fans pelted it with rocks, breaking three windows, police said.

Many of the star players, including Rivaldo and Ronaldinho, had abandoned the celebrations at Rio's Antonio Carlos Jobim airport, choosing instead to fly home after more than 30 hours in transit from Japan and an award ceremony at the presidential palace in Brasilia.

The parade was originally supposed arrive in Rio de Janeiro at around 3:00 p.m., but celebrations involving half a million people in Brasilia, the nation's capital, delayed the team, which arrived in Rio at approximately 7:00 p.m.

Two hours later, the team left the airport atop three trucks accompanied by samba singer Zeca Pagodinho.

Fans lining the parade route since early afternoon slowed the parade's progress to a mere crawl.

By the time the team got to Sao Paulo, at around 4:30 a.m. today, only team members Beletti, Cafu, Denilson, Juninho, Kaka, Marcos, Ricardinho and Roberto Carlos remained out of the 23 players who travelled to South Korea and Japan.

The players arrived at Sao Paulo's Sambadrome stadium at about 6:30 a.m where they paraded for about 30 minutes in front of a few die-hard fans.

The homecoming festivities had begun early on Tuesday in the capital Brasilia, where Air Force fighter planes, trucks blaring music and 500,000 people escorted the ``Scolari family'' to a party in the presidential palace.

A day later, without Scolari, team captain Cafu and six other players made it to Sao Paulo and went to the Sambodrome, the venue of annual Carnival parades. There, they honoured the 2,000 fans among the city's 10 million people who had waited throughout the night. — AP, Reuters

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