I Watched the Brazilians Conquer Times Square
A taste of redemption for the Club World Cup.
Standing on a concrete jetty in the sea of green and white and maroon, a man was FaceTiming with his wife and kid. He switched his phone to the front camera, facing outward. On the screen, his young son’s eyes went wide, his mouth gaped open.
He saw all the tricolor striped shirts bouncing up and down, all the tricolor flags waving in the foreground while the kaleidoscopic digital displays and boldface billboards for Broadway shows rose up behind them. They were dancing and singing in this valley between the glass skyscrapers like some joyous army who’d conquered the capital of the world. Theirs looked like Hungarian flags, but these belonged to football fans. They were flown by the Fluminense faithful as they took over Times Square at 11 a.m. on a Saturday.
The Tricolor had come from Rio de Janeiro to New York for a Club World Cup match with Ulsan of South Korea. Well, the match was at MetLife Stadium out in New Jersey’s “Meadowlands,” a euphemistic name to say the least, and I never had any intent to go. But I did want to see the Fluzão take over Times Square, which a local supporters’ group called NY FLU had promised they’d do for a good hour and a half on Saturday morning.
There were whole families there together, little kids sitting on parental shoulders as they bounced up and down as a unit, and there were 20-something dudes with Modelos in brown paper bags. (With the match still seven hours away, this had the look of a serious day out. Suddenly, I wished I was going to the Meadowlands.) The sound of drums was constant, the choruses unstoppable even as the concentration of the crowd drifted back and forth across 46th street. Nobody was deterred by the passing cement trucks or the eight-foot Bumblebee from Transformers, one of the area’s bizarre (and occasionally infamous) street performers trading picture poses for tourist dollars.
It takes a lot to get a New Yorker to Times Square, but I’d been leaning towards coming even before I watched my first 30 minutes of Club World Cup football the night before. I’d tuned in just in time to see Miguel Merentiel score a glorious equalizing goal for Boca Juniors against Bayern Munich. He’d scampered in behind Jonathan Tah to latch onto a through ball, tapped it smartly around Josip Stanišić to get 1-on-1 with the keeper, and smacked it over Manuel Neuer with aplomb. Then I watched the Boca fans turn the Hard Rock Stadium into the Bombonera.
The South American teams have been the redemption for this tournament, even if you don’t buy that they’ve made some grand statement about where they stand in relation to the European outfits. (Brazil, it should be said, has four teams in the Round of 16.) The breathtaking cynicism and superficiality of this whole thing has been offset just a bit by what the Argentines and Brazilians have brought to the table, if only because these fans have been showing Americans what this game is all about.
How many young kids are seeing up close what it means for supporters to generate their own atmosphere, without any orchestration from the announcer or the Jumbotron? How many are feeling what it is to be in a crowd of people singing the same songs they and their fathers have for generations? These are not things you get from preseason friendlies. There have been some wonderful videos of bewildered Yanks getting drawn into crowd scenes on the street.
And there was some more of that here, as passing cars honked their approval and the famous open-top double-decker tour buses rolled on by. The out-of-towners who topped them seemed to view this tricolor exhibition as just another New York sight to be seen, brandishing their selfie sticks and hooting with joy. Still more tourists and even a few New Yorkers wandered by foot into Father Duffy Square, this section of the Times Square complex featuring statues of World War I hero Francis Duffy and Broadway legend George M. Cohan, to take in the scene.
A young Fluminense fan climbed the latter statue and sat on Cohan’s bronze shoulders, flapping his arms wildly to draw more out of the crowd before someone threw him the biggest tricolor flag of all to wave about. All the while, the songs rang out with never much more than 10 seconds between them. Down in the center of it, two guys with a tambourine, a microphone, and some classic New York turista gear — teal Statue of Liberty hats and a torch — stood on an elevated surface and led the crowd in a boisterous, sing-song rendition of the Fluminense staple, “Louco da Cabeça.” Soon enough, they welcomed a couple of young kids up with them to lead the cheers.
These were major moments for them all, even the one on FaceTime a million miles away. He got to see things he was familiar with in a place that was anything but, and suddenly a whole lot more must have seemed possible. That’s some vindication for this tournament, and so was this whole reminder of the rich traditions that can pass us by here in the Northern Hemisphere, where we always seem to be looking East or West but rarely South.
Until this week, I had no idea that another Fluminense nickname is “Pó de Arroz,” for the rice powder fans throw from the stands before games. Or that they’re the oldest club in Rio. Or even that they play at the legendary Maracanã, a ground they share with blistering rivals Flamengo, with whom they contest the “Fla-Flu” derby. And I never really appreciated those fantastic kits, either. Am I about to join the Tricolor?