It’s actually almost two hours until the game starts, but Katia Ciline Pereira Lima and her family have made themselves comfortable with a couple of folding chairs in front of the legendary Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro and are waiting to be admitted. It’s against FC Santos, Pelé’s club, where PSG star Neymar’s career began. But Katia Ciline’s heart only beats for the “red-black nation”, as the supporters of Rio’s cult club Flamengo call themselves.
“Flamengo means everything to me. Flamengo is my people, my love, my passion. I burn for my team. For me, Flamengo is the best thing in the world,” the 31-year-old geriatric nurse tells DW.
What it means when flamengo dominates life becomes clear when you look at her schedule: Katia lives in Itaborai, an industrial suburb of Rio de Janeiro. It takes about an hour and a half to get to the stadium, because the game starts late that night she won’t be back home until around 2am. “And tomorrow I have to go back to work at 5 a.m..” Katia is happy to accept the short night for the experience of being part of Flamengo. Because of the high ticket prices, however, she has to limit her visits to selected games.
Reach for South America’s soccer crown
On Saturday in the final of the Copa Libertadores in the Estadio Monumental in Guayaquil/Ecuador (5 p.m. local time/10 p.m. CEST), Flamengo will take on South America’s football crown in the all-Brazilian final against Athletico Paranaense from Curitiba.
The red and black colors of Flamengo are omnipresent in Brazil
Almost one in four Brazilians will be crossing their fingers as the Rio club reach for their third Copa Libertadores title after 1981 and 2019. According to surveys, the club in Brazil has around 45 million fans, making it the most popular in the country. Behind them comes Corinthians, the local rival of the 2020 and 2021 Copa winners Palmeiras from Brazil’s largest city, Sao Paulo, with around 32 million followers.
“The clubs from Sao Paulo and Rio de Janeiro have the largest followings in Brazil, which is also due to the fact that these metropolitan regions have grown massively in recent decades,” football historian David Gomes told DW. “The popularity is also due to the fact that it was one of the club’s most successful times when television became the leading medium in Brazil [Flamengo, Anm. d. Red.] gave.”
Flamengo (right) and Palmeiras players before a league match at the Maracanã in 2019
Then there is Flamengo’s home ground Maracanã – one of the most famous stadiums in the world. “The Maracanã is the great symbol of Brazilian football,” Gomes explains the myth of the stadium, which was built in the late 1940s for the 1950 World Cup and where Flamengo won many titles.
Poor’s Club
Flamengo is a club whose supporters are mostly poor, black and the favela population, explains history lecturer Rubens (45), who is involved in the anti-racist fan scene and whose full name is not given for reasons of personal safety. The identification with the favela, the slums in Brazil’s cities, is so great that the team is also called the “favela team”.
Football historian and teacher David Gomes: “90 percent of Flamenguista’s students”
“When the opponents beat us, they sing in the stadium “Silence in the Favela,” says Rubens. “I’m a teacher, I work in the Favela Complexo Alemão and 90 percent of my students are flamenguistas.” However, there are also students who are still have never been to the Maracanã because visiting there has become more and more unaffordable for many people since the 2014 World Cup, where Germany won the World Cup in the Maracanã Rubens.
Salino takes a similar view of an anti-racist fan initiative dedicated to commemorating the murdered lesbian Afro-Brazilian local politician Marielle Franco five years ago. “The importance of Flamengo for Brazilian society is that the club is now a mass movement.” That’s why the club is so attractive for political influence.
In fact, Flamengo is something of a melting pot of the Brazilian people. In the meantime, the economically better off white population increasingly dominates in the stadium, but on the street it is the poor, the poorly paid workers, who openly support Flamengo. When the third all-Brazilian Copa final in a row takes place on Saturday, crowds will gather in front of screens in bars and restaurants not just in Rio but across Brazil. And most of them are hoping for a next successful chapter in Flamengo’s history.