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What’s happening in Brazil? Pre-match nerves, that’s what, big time. National coach Dunga is a disciplinarian and doesn’t like stars very much, so he’s dropped one or two and is making all the players drink coconut milk and putting them to bed early. It’s a far cry from 2006 when the lads were to be found larging it up in a disco in Frankfurt and staggering onto the pitch with the mothers of all hangovers leaving the daughters in tears. OK, so Brazil didn’t win the World Cup, but at least... Read Full Story

What’s happening in Brazil? Pre-match nerves, that’s what, big time. National coach Dunga is a disciplinarian and doesn’t like stars very much, so he’s dropped one or two and is making all the players drink coconut milk and putting them to bed early. It’s a far cry from 2006 when the lads were to be found larging it up in a disco in Frankfurt and staggering onto the pitch with the mothers of all hangovers leaving the daughters in tears. OK, so Brazil didn’t win the World Cup, but at least... Read Full Story

What’s happening in Brazil? Pre-match nerves, that’s what, big time. National coach Dunga is a disciplinarian and doesn’t like stars very much, so he’s dropped one or two and is making all the players drink coconut milk and putting them to bed early. It’s a far cry from 2006 when the lads were to be found larging it up in a disco in Frankfurt and staggering onto the pitch with the mothers of all hangovers leaving the daughters in tears. OK, so Brazil didn’t win the World Cup, but at least... Read Full Story

Last week I considered how best to personify Rio de Janeiro. Can it, or she, be “a damsel in distress”, as suggested by my friend, Jorge, who goes on to explain that any risk taken in saving her is usually rewarded? So where does that leave Brasília, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year? It was only last month that the Governor of Brasília, José Roberto Arruda, was filmed in the act of taking a $28000 bribe, which he subsequently claimed was a charitable contribution to be used... Read Full Story

Last week I considered how best to personify Rio de Janeiro. Can it, or she, be “a damsel in distress”, as suggested by my friend, Jorge, who goes on to explain that any risk taken in saving her is usually rewarded? So where does that leave Brasília, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year? It was only last month that the Governor of Brasília, José Roberto Arruda, was filmed in the act of taking a $28000 bribe, which he subsequently claimed was a charitable contribution to be used... Read Full Story

Last week I considered how best to personify Rio de Janeiro. Can it, or she, be “a damsel in distress”, as suggested by my friend, Jorge, who goes on to explain that any risk taken in saving her is usually rewarded? So where does that leave Brasília, which celebrates its fiftieth anniversary this year? It was only last month that the Governor of Brasília, José Roberto Arruda, was filmed in the act of taking a $28000 bribe, which he subsequently claimed was a charitable contribution to be used... Read Full Story

Next month will make it nine years since I settled in Rio de Janeiro. How to explain this place, the “cidade maravilhosa”, other than to say it is one great, heaving mass of contradictions? It might have been first glimpsed by the white man in the month of January (1502) but a river (“rio”) it ain’t: it’s a bay, dude. According to today’s “O Globo”, Rio now registers 36 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants – actually down by 14.4% over a twelve-month period – but two million of us just... Read Full Story

Next month will make it nine years since I settled in Rio de Janeiro. How to explain this place, the “cidade maravilhosa”, other than to say it is one great, heaving mass of contradictions? It might have been first glimpsed by the white man in the month of January (1502) but a river (“rio”) it ain’t: it’s a bay, dude. According to today’s “O Globo”, Rio now registers 36 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants – actually down by 14.4% over a twelve-month period – but two million of us just... Read Full Story

Next month will make it nine years since I settled in Rio de Janeiro. How to explain this place, the “cidade maravilhosa”, other than to say it is one great, heaving mass of contradictions? It might have been first glimpsed by the white man in the month of January (1502) but a river (“rio”) it ain’t: it’s a bay, dude. According to today’s “O Globo”, Rio now registers 36 homicides per 100 000 inhabitants – actually down by 14.4% over a twelve-month period – but two million of us just... Read Full Story

The big news story in Brazil this week - as evidenced by a fellow writer on this site - was the row over who should have custody of a nine-year old boy called Sean Goldman. Sean’s mother died earlier this year and Sean continued to live in Rio with his step-father and family, separated from his biological father, David Goldman, right up to Christmas Eve, when père et fils were reunited, put on a jet hired by NBC and flown back home to New Jersey. So why all the fuss? The stepfather is a... Read Full Story