AMONG THE BRAZILIANS
— Le Franc-Tireur | 12/03/1925 —

The Brazilians who will meet the French football team next Sunday in Buffalo trained last Sunday on the field and against the eleven of the Stade Français, and yesterday afternoon at the Buffalo field.

Immediately after them, the Uruguayans also organized a match between starters and substitutes. It is therefore easy to make a direct comparison between the Brazilian game and the Uruguayan method.

The Brazilians are more slender, lighter, less attached to the ground and the ball than the Uruguayans. Their average height is taller than that of their southern neighbors, but they are also leaner and sleeker.

A GAME OF FINESSE.

To the physical structure corresponds, like an effect to a cause, a tactic of finesse. No major shifts in play from one extreme to the other, from a left half-back to the right winger; no penetration force like Petrone, no violent shocks; no geometric play and mechanical rigor. Compared to Brazilian tactics, Uruguayan football seems as square as that of English professionals. However, the professional players from across the Channel would have quickly put down the momentum, ruined the feints of the Olympic champions. This is enough to say how tenuous, diluted and slender the Brazilian method is.

WHY ARE BRAZILIANS IN PARIS?

The Brazilians all belong to the Club from the city of São Paulo, in the south of the country. They came to France first to try to prove that the Uruguayans are not the only decent footballers in South America, then to reward, with a tour of the Old Continent, players who, for five years, wear with unwavering loyalty, in the first team or in the lower teams, the colors of the club. Only inside left Junqueira, a medical doctor, comes from Rio de Janeiro.

MULATTOES AND MIXED RACE.

The Brazilian team has certain common traits, physical and playing, with Egypt's Olympic eleven last year.

There are no handsome Ethiopian Negroes among the São-Paulistanos; but many of them are colored men. Thus their centre-forward Arthur Friedenreich, who is their best player, is the son of a German and a Negress; a replacement full-back, Lopes, is a mixed-race Indian and everyone in Brazil nicknames him Guarani, the name of the indigenous tribe. This Guarani is the javelin throwing champion of South America, with 55 meters.

NOSTALGIC SONGS.

The Brazilians are linked together by a very solid sporting friendship as we said yesterday, they formed a jazz, with a violin, a guitar, a coffee pot filled with stones and a matchbox case from the control room. Miguel plays the violin, Friedenreich accompanies with the guitar, Araken handles the coffee maker, the wonderful little left winger player Netto blows into the matchbox stuck against the open hand and all the others sing nostalgic tunes from the country, which transports you as if by magic to the Equator line, in an atmosphere heavy with heat and strong scents.