by Glenn Stout
“Does it matter that, regardless of [what you’ve said], the president is using you and your team as a prop in this culture war against other black leagues?” I ask. “Because you can kind of say it as many times as you want, but the appearance is that you are complicit.”
“See, you’re suggesting that that’s the case,” Sullivan says. “We don’t believe that.”
It was that moment when I knew, despite anything said, that my initial thought was correct. This shit was weird. Trump and whiteness had won the Day of Reckoning. To be passive in the face of the crime is as dangerous as the transparent attack. To be willfully ignorant about race perpetuates and enables racism in America. I can’t help but think that they are all too afraid, too scared to challenge white power, to do what is just, to show a shred of morality for the unprivileged.
And while it is weird, by this point Sullivan’s words are expected. Yes, all of this is still insulting. Yet since black people were kidnapped and dragged here, four violent centuries says all of this is the American normal.
Jerry Jones provided the smile that killed football’s latest revolt. He is no ally. He is not smiling to me. He is smiling to them: the rest of America. I’m sure they are at ease. His message to them is one that we have heard from white people in power for centuries: Don’t worry. The black men had their fun and are back, reset, ready for servitude, docile once more. How dastardly. How American. What a rush.
VII. “We gon’ be alright”
Talking to black people in this country about the last two years since Kaepernick ignited protest in football and elsewhere, it is easy to become despondent. Folks truly, honestly, wanted to believe something could be done, that we could be saved, and that progress, the same progress we have always clamored for, was possible.
Look around. There is no better. There is no hope. This movie ends in tragedy. The idea that white folks think black folks have reason to believe in change is deflating.
There is no reason for optimism when the first black president was followed by a man looking to destroy his legacy and belittle the achievements and advancements of people who he sees as less than. That includes the men in pads who look as I do.
How can I enjoy optimism while a country pays black people for entertainment, appropriates our culture, then spits in their faces when they say anything other than “thank you”?
Optimism is not for me, though it is beautiful to dream. There is no hope for the black body in modern America. But neither am I despondent.
Black protesters turned football players should not be hopeful. They also should not compromise. They did not win. Whiteness won. It always wins. But there is space to be positive. Blackness has become indefatigable even if our existence here and on the football field fighting for equality is Sisyphean and disheartening.
Thinking of this often makes me think of Kendrick Lamar and his anthems about Black America. On his 2015 album To Pimp a Butterfly, Kendrick examines the emotions we can have being American. In the past 15 months, I found myself doing this, going back to these affirmations, humming them during “The Star-Spangled Banner.”
“Nigga, we gon’ be alright,” Kendrick promises.
These words, in repetition, are like a proverb. Black people were kidnapped and tortured on the way to this country, built its infrastructure, and became its greatest athletes and entertainers. We are the culture, the sound, its consciousness—the heartbeat of America and somehow also its biggest enemy. Kendrick’s ghetto lullaby reminds me of that. The toot of that saxophone, the ping of that high hat, the rasp of his Compton attitude: it’s all soothing.
Our culture, our beauty, allows us—throughout this tortured cycle of protest and destruction—to keep our pride. There is fire shut up in our bones. We have shown how mighty we are. Listen to the song. Kendrick keeps saying, “Nigga, we gon’ be alright.”
Well.
Nigga, maybe you right. Maybe one day we actually will.
Sam Borden
Eternal Champions
from ESPN: The Magazine
There is rain in Chiquinho’s pockets. Rain running down his shoulders. Rain squishing through his shoes. The rain is so loud, he barely hears the music. The rain is so thick, he barely sees the coffins.
Chiquinho tries to focus. He has a job. He is the groundskeeper. He takes care of the undersoil and the topsoil. He takes care of the field. This stadium is his home. The members of the club are his friends.
One of the goalkeepers, Danilo, used to joke with Chiquinho about the bare patch down at the end of the field. All that mowing and feeding and watering in the warm Brazilian sun and Chiquinho still couldn’t get grass to grow there. “Where is the grass?” Danilo would ask with a sparkle in his eyes, and Chiquinho’s leathery face would crinkle.
One of the team’s trainers, Anderson Paixão, used to talk with Chiquinho about the stray dog Chiquinho found lying outside the gates one morning a few years back. The dog was hurt and whimpering—a boy nearby said he thought it might have been hit by a car—and Chiquinho and his crew took it in. They gave the dog dried meat and bought it medicine. They rubbed its belly and cleaned its black fur. They got it a leash and built it a tiny house out near the shed with the rakes. They named it Pitico, which is Portuguese for “something little.”
Before training, Paixão would pet Pitico and wrestle Pitico and kick soccer balls for Pitico, like a game of fetch, except Pitico would skip right past the balls because he was more interested in chasing the birds swooping low near the sidewalls. Pitico would nuzzle Paixão, and Paixão would giggle, and Chiquinho, watching from the side, would take pictures on his phone that he could look at during his long bus ride home every night around dusk. Chiquinho took pictures of the players before each game too.
But now Pitico is missing. And Paixão, Chiquinho’s friend, is in a box coming toward him, and Danilo is in one too, and the water that has been running off Chiquinho’s neck all day is suddenly rising through the grass on the field like a bathtub with the stopper dropped in. Big puddles are forming, and water is splashing everywhere, and Chiquinho the groundskeeper is scared.
There are tens of thousands of people watching Brazilian servicemen carry in one coffin after another. The coffins are heavy. What if a soldier carrying Danilo or Paixão slips? What if a coffin gets covered in mud?
Chiquinho cannot allow this. There are 50 coffins today. Fifty. And it is Chiquinho’s field. He even laid out the floral wreaths and tied the bunting through the holes in the metal fences. He doesn’t know anything about flowers or colors or bunting, but he wanted to make it nice. He wanted it to be respectful. He knows the coffins must stay dry. He has to fix the flooding.
As the processional continues, he runs toward the end of the stadium. There must be a blockage. One of the drainpipes again. He bows his shoulders and slides into the concrete bunker under the stands where all the pipes snake together. It is quiet in there: nothing is draining.
Chiquinho bangs on a pipe, testing to see whether he can hear which valve is stopped up. He bangs on another and another, twisting and whirling around to test as many as he can. He can’t figure out which one is jammed. He slams the pipes with his hand. His cheeks are wet.
He has no choice. Chiquinho takes a saw and begins hacking. He cuts through one pipe and a second and a third, destroying the drainage system. He cuts another pipe. And another. And another. His blade flails in all directions.
Finally, Chiquinho cuts the right pipe. Gunky water gushes everywhere. His pants and shirt are sopping. Chiquinho stumbles out of the bunker and back onto the field. The pooling in the grass begins to ebb. He exhales.
Then he straightens up and stands at attention, clutching the saw in his fist. He stares as the rest of the coffins are carried in. Everyone else in the arena watches too. Some watch the military men. Some watch the widows or the mothers or the fathers who scream and hold each other through plastic ponchos. Some watch the children, who fidget and fuss and might or might not understand
exactly why an entire city in the interior of Brazil has come together at a soccer stadium to mourn in the rain.
Chiquinho just watches all the feet. He cannot help it. He is praying no one slips.
It is November 23, 2016—10 days earlier. It is hot and dry. The winds are calm. The sunlight glints off the stained glass of Santo Antônio Cathedral, which sits up high on one of the hills. The rain feels far away.
As afternoon shades toward evening, the people of Chapecó crowd the streets wearing green and white. Vendors set up carts selling water and beer. Fans park their cars and lean against the open trunks. More than 800 miles southwest of Rio de Janeiro, this dusty city known for its slaughterhouses and its farmland is preparing for the most important soccer game in its history.
Inside the stadium, Chiquinho waters the grass constantly in temperatures that rise toward 90 degrees. Down the street, at the Hotel Bertaso, the players of Chapecoense, which everyone just shortens to Chape (CHAH-pay), compose themselves. Before every home game, the players spend the night in this hotel together in “concentration.” They go over tactics and scouting. They talk about formations and strategy. Then, when they are done with all that, they pass the time.
The hotel gives the team the entire second floor, and the players spread out. Danilo, the goalkeeper with the kind eyes, is chatty. Kempes, the striker with the frizzy Afro, plays his pandeiro, which is a tiny tambourine. Tiaguinho, a young winger with a dimple, cannot put down his phone.
The mood is buoyant. The game tonight is against San Lorenzo, a team from Argentina, and it is the second leg of a two-match semifinal in the Copa Sudamericana, the South American Cup. In the first match of the aggregate series, in Buenos Aires, the teams tied 1–1. Tonight all Chape needs to do is tie 0–0, because the tiebreaker in this tournament is goals scored in the opponent’s stadium. If Chape advances, it will go to the final of one of the continent’s most important tournaments. For a team from a city like Chapecó, a team that was founded in 1973 and was in the lowest division in Brazil as recently as 2009, it is fantasy.
The players get ready to leave for the stadium, but Tiaguinho cannot stop texting his wife, Graziele. She is only 19, but they grew up in the same town and have been in love for years, ever since the day Tiaguinho sat next to her on a bench in grade school and showed her his arm. He had written her name on it in marker, over and over from elbow to wrist. He said, “See how much I like you?” and she laughed.
A day earlier, not long after the players arrived at the hotel to begin concentration, Tiaguinho was sitting in the hall outside his room. Two teammates, Matheus Biteco and Caramelo, approached him. “We have a present for you,” they told him, and Biteco gave him a gift bag. Tiaguinho took the bag and looked up at them, wary.
“It is from a female fan who likes you,” Biteco said, and Tiaguinho dropped the bag as if it were on fire. He did not want his friends to see him interested in anyone but Graziele. “Just open it, man,” Caramelo said, nudging it back, and Tiaguinho grudgingly pulled out a tiny box with a shiny ribbon and card. His eyes went wide. It was from Graziele.
Tiaguinho furrowed his brow. He opened the card and read it slowly, tracing his finger over some of the words. Then he closed it, took a deep breath, and opened it again. Biteco leaned in, hovering over his friend, and Tiaguinho shot up from the floor, shouting and dancing and hugging everyone around him. He showed them what was inside the box: tiny shoes. Then he rocked an imaginary baby in his arms while his teammates howled.
Since that moment, Tiaguinho has been floating. Even now, just hours before this match against San Lorenzo, he is texting Graziele about names. They both like Maitê for a girl; it means “beloved.” For a boy, Tiaguinho pushes for Santiago, which is a family name. Finally his teammates tell him it is time to go. He cannot resist and texts once more, telling Graziele that he loves her.
The game begins around 7. Arena Condá thrums. The fans chant and cheer and sing, standing together on the concrete bleachers or crowding up against the fence that separates the walkway from the team benches. In the press box, Chape’s radio play-by-play announcer, Rafael Henzel, holds up his phone to take a video of the energy just before kickoff, even as he narrates the action live.
Rafael is 43, with a flat face and thin hair and glasses. He works with several other announcers, including his partner, Renan Agnolin, but he is the team’s voice. He has been coming to Chape games since he was little. As a child, he would arrive at the arena with no money and wait outside the gates. Once everyone had gone in and the game started, he could find an entrance that was unattended and slip in for free. He cheered for the team when it was still playing in the amateur leagues. He became a broadcaster at age 15. When Chape finally qualified for Brazil’s top division in 2013, he cried in his radio booth.
Tonight, with a place in the final at stake, Rafael is even more dynamic than usual. The Chape players know what they have to do: just avoid conceding a goal. They do not need to score, and San Lorenzo’s players are more talented anyway. San Lorenzo has three players who played in England’s Premier League. It has a regular for Argentina’s national team. It has players who play for Uruguay and Paraguay.
Chape has only the one away goal it scored in the first game that it wants to protect.
After the first 15 minutes, the Chape players—and the crowd—grow more confident. Danilo dives to his left to push away a shot, and the fans erupt. Dener, a midfielder, flicks the ball over his head to elude an opponent, and the spectators shout a mocking “Oh!” as the San Lorenzo player gives chase.
Chape occasionally presses forward in attack, and there is one sequence, about half an hour into the game, when Chape nearly scores. A free kick comes in, and Willian Thiego, a stout central defender, lashes the ball into the goal. He turns away to celebrate, wanting desperately to share the emotion with his teammates on the bench. He does not see the offside flag raised. When he does, he stops his gyrations mid-jiggle, shakes his head, and runs back up the field.
Mostly, Chape just defends. A San Lorenzo player’s header hits the post and bounces out. Danilo slides out quickly to block a shot. A long-range blast goes wide.
The minutes creep by. Seventy. Eighty. Eighty-five. Eighty-eight. Eighty-nine. It is still 0–0. The fans are frothing as it appears Chape will do it. The stadium is shaking. With seconds left, San Lorenzo gets a free kick and lofts the ball toward Chape’s goal. Even with all the defenders there, it ricochets around and falls at the feet of Marcos Angeleri, an experienced Argentine. Angeleri is directly in front of the goal, 18 feet away. All he has to do is shoot the ball into the net, which is 24 feet wide, and San Lorenzo will steal the game, go to the final, and keep Chape home. Danilo, the goalkeeper, looks helpless. Rafael, in the radio booth, puts his hands to his head. He fears the worst: at the last breath, Chape will lose.
But as Angeleri prepares to shoot, Danilo rises up like a lion on its back legs. And somehow, with his right foot splayed sideways, he blocks Angeleri’s blast from close range. For a beat, it is as if the fans cannot fathom what has happened. But then the roar is long and loud, and Danilo thumps his chest with glee.
Rafael, in his radio booth, calls out Danilo’s name, over and over. Except he changes it. Instead of saying “Danilo!” he wails, “Deus-nilo! Deus-nilo! Deus-nilo!” When the referee blows the whistle to end the game and officially send Chape to the final, he bellows it once more. “Deus-nilo! Deus-nilo! Deus-nilo!”
In Portuguese, Deus is the word for God.
The celebration begins in the hot and sticky locker room. The players form a circle and scream out the team song, the one the fans sing whenever something good happens or something bad happens or, really, anything happens: “Ohhhhhh! Vamos-vamos-Cha-pay! Vamos-vamos-Cha-pay! Vamos-vamos-Cha-paaaa-aay!”
They are delirious. Ananias, an attacking midfielder, jumps up and down on the seat in front of his cubby. Bruno Rangel, the team’s leading scorer, is shirtless and claps his hands over his head. Sérgio Manoel, one
of the only players still wearing his full uniform, dances through the middle of it all. Jackson Follmann, the backup goalkeeper, bangs his hands against the frame of his locker. Even the mayor of Chapecó, Luciano Buligon, holding a paper cup in his hand, shouts along.
The party moves to Spettus, a restaurant in town where the team often goes. Paixão, the trainer, has a cavaquinho, or four-string guitar. Willian Thiego has a surdo, a large Brazilian bass drum. Waiters circulate, cutting thick slices of sirloin from towering skewers. The players relive the match. There is a toast to Danilo for his miraculous save. The wives and girlfriends sit together and talk about how they have never seen their men like this.
The women of Chape are close. The men are always playing or training or in concentration before they play again, so genuine friendships among the women are natural. When Graziele received the results of her pregnancy test—before she surprised Tiaguinho with the news—she went with Geisa, who is Caramelo’s wife, and Val, who is married to defensive midfielder Gil. They had not known one another long, but when the results came back positive, the women hugged Graziele and congratulated her and told her she was so young to be having a baby.
At Spettus, the women talk about the future. About the championship game, yes, but only a little bit. They talk about Graziele’s baby and about a trip that many of the families are planning to take to the Dominican Republic after the season. They talk about bathing suits and how they will go to the beach together. They talk about relaxing.
Aline Machado joins in but cannot stop looking at her husband, Filipe. He has never been this happy, not when he was playing in Iran or elsewhere in the Middle East or for other clubs in Brazil. Not even when he was making good money. “He looks fulfilled,” she says to one of her friends.