Goooooaaaaallllllllll!

At stake was the World Club soccer championship--Santos of Brazil v. Milan of Italy--and all Brazil braced for the familiar frenzy. Work came to a standstill; every radio and TV set was tuned to the broadcast. In Brasilia President Joao Goulart canceled all appointments and camped by his radio; congressional committees recessed; Alliance for Progress meetings in Sao Paulo were scheduled around game time. And in Rio 150,000 passionate souls, every man jack of them willing to part with his last cruzeiro, squeezed into Maracana Stadium for the games. Games? It was more like a Latin American madness.

Conk, Kick, Bash. Brazil was already behind in the three-game series, having lost the first hard fought encounter, 2-4, to the Italians in Milan. But now Santos' eleven-man team was on national ground, and with Brazil's famed "twelfth man"--the crowd--at its back. "Goooooaaaaallllllllll!" howled the mob at each Santos goal; fireworks lit the sky and fans danced in the stands. No wonder that Santos, even playing without its injured superstar Pele (TIME, April 12), won the second game, 4-2, tying it all up.

By the third game, it was hardly a game at all. Photographers charged onto the field to conk Milan players with umbrellas; broadcasters bashed Italians with microphones; the Italians retaliated by kicking Santos players in the face, the Brazilians kicked right back. Of the regulation 90 minutes, 39 were spent in furious combat, 51 playing soccer. At last, Santos booted home a penalty shot for a 1-0 victory. Returning home, one of Milan's wounded groaned: "Never in all my soccer days have I seen anything like this."

No other game interests Latin Americans so much. The continent's futbol madness began as a respectable British import. In the 1840s, the citizens of Argentina's port of Buenos Aires watched in fascination as the crews of British ships idled away dockside hours kicking a ball around. In Peru, where other British sailors spread the fever, the saying is that "the only good things we owe the British are soccer and Scotch." And of the two, soccer is by far the more intoxicating. It appeals to a Latin sense of rhythm, of masculine grace and strength.

On Rio's Copacabana beach, groups of boys and men, using heads, shoulders, bodies, legs and feet, keep a soccer ball in the air for minutes on end.

In empty Paraguay, with a population (1,900,000) smaller than that of Philadelphia, there are eleven teams in the top division alone. The Chilean Federation of Futbol carries 1,320 amateur soccer clubs and 120,000 players on its roster.

Sudden Death. Soccer is supposed to be a team sport. But a Latin American side is a collection of eleven virtuosos, each as proud as a bullfighter, each with his own style, each with his own nickname among the hero-worshiping fans. In Argentina, the average base pay for the dozen top stars is a handsome (by Latin standards) $9,000 a year. Brazil's Pele, a dark-skinned 23-year-old whose grace and daring leave the fans in ecstasy, gets something like $40,000 a year, has been received by Queen Elizabeth, lionized in books and dozens of songs. Spain's Real Madrid reportedly offered the Santos Club $1,000,000 for him. But to sell him abroad would be unthinkable. Says Santos Club President (and Sao Paulo State Legislator) Athie Coury: "I would lose not only my job and the next election, but I would also meet sudden and violent death at the hands of Santos fans."

In the early days, Argentina and Uruguay ruled the Latin-American soccer world. But now Brazil is the country for everyone to beat, and nowhere is victory greeted with such delirium nor defeat with such agitation. Chile and Argentina have 9-ft. fences around their soccer fields to protect referees and enemy players from enraged fans, but Rio's giant Maracana Stadium wisely has a dry moat, 7 ft. deep and more than 5 ft. wide.

Era of Conquests. When Brazil won its first World All Star Cup in Sweden in 1958 the airliner that brought the players home was escorted into Rio by 16 Brazilian Air Force jets. Stores closed, Congress adjourned. Thousands of fans hoisted their heroes onto a waiting fire truck, then followed them into the city as more than 1,000,000 flag-waving, dancing, screaming fans lined the route. President Juscelino Kubitschek waited outside his palace with gold medals and a proclamation: "We have received the emblem of victory as an affirmation of our race. This is the beginning of a new era of conquests."

Four years later, when the World All Star Cup was held again, Brazil conquered once more. Last year Brazil, championed by Santos, won another of international soccer's highest prizes by beating Portugal for the World Club Championship. And by demolishing Milan last week Santos won the World Club Championship for a second straight year. All eleven players got $2,000 bonuses. And Club President Coury announced an appropriate bonus for the "twelfth man"--a statue, of what is not yet decided, from the grateful people of Santos to the fans of Rio, to be erected outside Maracana Stadium.

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