Search: ' Vasco da Gama'

São Caetano weren’t founded until 1989 yet rose rapidly to the pinnacle of the South American game, only to fall at the last hurdle and slip back as the richer giants reasserted themselves. Robert Shaw reports

Brazil’s most consistent club at the start of this decade were not one of the major names. Instead it was Associação Desportiva São Caetano, a club that rose from the third division of the São Paulo state league to upset the establishment before returning to near obscurity six years later.

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Tranmere's Gavin Ward's celebrated 80-yard goal against Orient leaves just another 63 to go to match the current king of goalscoring keepers, as Robert Shaw reports from Brazil

Liverpool fans may recall the São Paulo goalkeeper’s heroics in Tokyo last December, but the truly distinctive aspect of Rogerio Ceni is the havoc he wreaks at the other end. When Ceni’s delicately clipped free-kick and penalty salvaged a 2-2 draw for São Paulo against Cruzeiro on August 20, he set a world-record scoring tally for a keeper of 64 goals, two ahead of the Paraguayan José Luis Chilavert.

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Romário may be greying but he’ll still score you plenty of goals – provided you don’t ask him to travel or do too much of that training nonsense, explains Robert Shaw

Romário da Souza Faria celebrates his 40th birthday on January 29 still mad about goals. His critics might add that he is equally passionate about bars, nightclubs, the beach, bad-mouthing fellow strikers and developing minor knocks on the eve of away trips. But when he claimed his award as the Brazilian national championship’s top scorer in December 2005, Baixinho (Shorty) was speechless. Or rather he told the presenters of the ceremony in Rio’s João Caetano theatre that he did not really need to add any words to back up his impressive goal tally.

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The latest "new Maradona" is ready to fly the nest but, as Ben Collins asks, where will he land?

It was only a matter of time before Carlos Tevez left Argentina, especially after some spell-binding performances at last summer’s Olympics. However, the team that tempted the latest “new Maradona” away from Boca Juniors was not a star-studded Champions League regular, but Corinthians of Brazil; a fascinating choice for a number of reasons, not only because the US$22 million (£11.4m) transfer may have been instigated by a certain Russian billionaire.

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Former Brazil coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo has been convicted of not paying his dues, as Robert Shaw  relates. You’d never have a dodgy national coach over here, of course

Is former national team coach Vanderlei Luxemburgo the Jeffrey Archer of Brazilian football? Both have received popular acclaim, been rumbled through du­bious assignations with women and been economical with the truth when it came to documenting their lives – in the coach’s case, taking three years off his age.

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