Soccer and Naked Women in Brazil

   In a marvelous story in today's New York Times, Sam Borden takes a close look at the culture of pick-up soccer in Brazil, which will host next year's World Cup.

  The game is called pelada, a word Borden says is used by Brazilian men to refer to a naked woman.  He said a hotel doorman in Rio, waiting to play in a pick-up game, explained that, “Football and women are the only two things we really love.”

   You can tell the story is worth reading just by the first paragraph: "In Brazil, the ball is always moving. It moves on grass and on sand, on concrete and on cobblestone. Sometimes, during the rainy season, it even moves on water."

   Borden takes us from Rio to the quadras of Sao Paulo to the remote city of Manus in the Amazon where players play for the love of the game, because they have nothing else to do, in the hopes of being discovered by a professional team or to escape drug dealers.