Last Night was the Night

I don't know what the exact qualifications are for the descriptor "glorious," but when in such doubt, I would prefer not to describe last night's victory as such. It was simply a victory. Ypiranga was under pressure from the first whistle to the last. About twenty minutes into the game, which was still scoreless, I said to the man sitting next to me, "Sport will win this game 3-0." And what do you know?

Ypiranga is from a small town, a few hours from Recife, called Santa Cruz do Capibaribe. (The Capibaribe is a river which runs from the interior of the state through Recife to the Atlantic. On its way through the city, it passes through some of the nicest neighborhoods in Recife. If your humble blogger could live anywhere he wanted in Recife, he would live on the banks of the Capibaribe. But only on the South/East bank. The other bank is no good. I don't know why. That's simply the case.) Between forty and sixty Ypiranga fans attended the game, and the police duly cordoned off a section of the stands for them. To the annoyance of the Sport fans (about 23,000 were in attendance), the space allotted to Ypiranga could have held a thousand fans, easily.

Glorious or not, it's always good to watch a winning effort with twenty-some thousand of your friends. Now on Sunday, at home, Sport needs to beat Vitória, the lanterninha (no one can explain the origin of the term, but in Portuguese the last-placed team is the "little lantern") to win the second round of the championship. Last Sunday Vitória let Náutico score six goals, and Sport is much, much better than Náutico. Sunday can't come soon enough.