Chico Buarque meets Ronaldinho

Chico Buarque is among the greatest composers of Brazilian music. From Wiki: “Chico’s increasing political activity against the Brazilian military dictatorship resulted in his arrest in 1968, and eventual self-exile to Italy in 1969. Chico returned to Brazil in 1970, using his fame and song-writing skills to protest against the dictatorship.” In a time where all the culture was ruled by military censors, he was able to write in such a subtle way that the army guys were not able to block his compositios. Many Brazilians – me included – believe that he is the #1 man in our musical scenario.

Now a TV channel is presenting some specials about him. One of these specials is entitled ‘Futebol’. He is fanatic for the sport (more than a normal Brazilian, if that’s possible) and he built a football field for him and his friends to play, but since so many people were showing up to play, he developed a tournament for amateur people. Politeama, his team named after his table football team, ended up winning a lot. Being famous as he is and with such strong links with football, he got together with Ronaldinho for a chat.

The coolest thing about this meeting is that Chico saw Ronaldinho’s Nike commercial where he shoots the ball to the cross bar four times in a row and decided to try it himself. After some time training that play, he managed to hit the bar 3 times with the ball coming back to him, but the fourth kick hit the back of the net. I was thinking to myself, why would he try to mimic the moves of a computer generated special effect?

They were dining and chatting in a restaurant when Chico asked Ronaldinho if that was real or just special effects. Ronaldinho said: “Oh no, I trained a lot to do that. That’s real.” Well, if Chico Buarque did it 3 times, I can believe Ronaldinho is able to do it 4 times.

I saw this video on the ‘Futebol’ special on TV
(image scanned from Ancelmo Goes’ column ant O Globo newspaper)

One of my favorite childhood games: table football

This guy is a musical genious that plays good football and write good books too!