From ANR correspondent Alex Abreu Gontijo in Rio:
Eduardo celebrated by lifting his shirt to reveal a T-shirt showing support for Peace in the place where he was born and raised and started play football in Brazil, Vila Kennedy. He revealed a message written in Portuguese: Paz na villa kennedy- RJ, meaning “Peace in the Villa Kennedy-RJ’
This is a reference to a community in Rio de Janeiro, Brasil. The slum has been the subject of fighting between rival criminal factions. Like Robbie Fowler in 1997, he showed a big social consciousness and commitment about one very special place to him. Thanks to his performance for the team of VK in the Slums championship in Brazil, one scout found and brought the lad to Croatia. The rest is history.
A film produced by Arsenal Supporters Trust member Jon Blair is on TV tonight. It’s about the drug wars between rival gangs in Rio and set in the same territory as City of God, one of my favourite movies of the last decade
The documentary True Stories: Dancing With the Devil is previewed in The Guardian today :
10pm, More4 Earlier this year, Forbes sent Rio de Janeiro straight to the top of its World’s Happiest Cities list, “urban centres closely associated with unmitigated joy”. But beyond the carnivals and glamorous beaches, the sprawling favelas tell a different story: of appalling poverty, murderous addiction and endless shoot-outs. Here, director Jon Blair drops us squarely into the middle of the socio-economic nightmare (where “City of God meets The Wire“), as we traverse the gangster-controlled slums in an astonishing documentary filled with harrowing, unforgettable images.