Futebol

For thousands of boys all over Brazil, football is their dream. Often this is not just a personal ambition to become a top player, but also their only chance to drag their family out of poverty. Only a fraction will succeed. One thousand five hundred boys turn up for the tryout for Flamengo, Rio's home team and the biggest in Brazil. Among them are boys like Fabrício, Jeosmar and Edmilson who we follow for two and a half years through early hopes, successes and bitter disappointments. .Legendary players like Pelé and Zico also reminisce on getting their own break as boys playing football in the streets.

Who could ever be ready to go from earning $100 per month to $10,000 in a few short months? Iranildo and Lúcio both play for Flamengo. One is a child of the Rio slums, suffering from malnutrition when he was talent-spotted, the other was born in Tocantins, an extremely rural village on the edge of the Amazonian rainforest. Both are completely unprepared for the pressures of top league games. Coping with thousands of euphoric expectant fans when you're winning is hard enough, but how to cope with thousands of furious and hostile fans when you lose? Add to that the shock of overnight success and fame and with it the ubiquitous material trappings of mobile phones, imported cars, designer clothes, society girlfriends, and your first passport. Can these boys avoid becoming spoiled and arrogant? Or worse, succumb to the pressures, mental more than physical, of being at the top...

Before Maradona, before David Beckham, Paulo Cesar Lima, aka Caju, was the rascal of Brazilian football in the 1970s. A genius with footwork, he had a curve kick that few goalies could predict. He was a showman and a show-off: trying out trick shots to impress the crowd and often risking missing a goal to try an amazing new shot. At a time before football stars, when salaries were low, and players signed blank contracts, footballers did not mix with elite society, but Caju changed all that, hanging out with nobility and celebrities all over the world, wearing show stoppingly flashy outfits, being seen at all the top nightspots, and dating the most beautiful women - Caju was the first real football superstar. But what happens when talent fades, or worse, is forgotten? This film follows Caju today as he visits his friends, whose secretaries have never heard of him and in whose big imported cars he sits, knowing he will never be able to afford one himself.