In the Ecuadorian wilderness, a footballer suffered one of the most bizarre injuries of all time. Midway through the second half, an ambulance was transporting an injured player off the field when...it collided with a second player from the same team, injuring his leg!
2003. Donizete, a forward for the Brazilian club Vasco da Gama, kisses the hand of President Eurico Miranda. Head coach Antônio Lopes looks on at this entire scene with a certain degree of distaste—though, in all likelihood, he himself had performed the very same ritual just seconds earlier.
Miranda ran Vasco with an authoritarian and iron fist. He positioned himself as the players' sole protector against referees, the football federation, and the press. To the players, Miranda was an unquestionable authority—akin to a Mafia don to whom one swears an oath of fealty—and so they sought to demonstrate their respect for him in various ways.
Indeed—as is not hard to imagine—Miranda was considered a truly colorful character in Brazil. To give you a rough idea of the kind of man he was, I have selected a few of his sharpest and most memorable quotes.
On his arch-rival (Flamengo):
"I don't know which gives me greater pleasure—the act of sex, or beating Flamengo."
On power within the club:
"Here at Vasco, *I* am in charge! Like a dictator!"
On relegation to a lower division:
"I have already stated that the word 'relegation' is strictly forbidden here. If I were to entertain the thought—even for a single second—that Vasco could be relegated, I would find the most remote spot in Siberia and move there to live!" (Amusingly, Vasco da Gama *was* indeed relegated to Série B that year—yet Miranda never did move to Russia.)
On politics and the law:
"The justice system needs to understand one thing: Brazilian football must have its own laws." On Pep Guardiola—when asked why he hired local coach Cristóvão Borges instead of seeking out a top-tier foreign manager:
"Everyone around here just spends their time wiping Pep Guardiola's nose. That Spaniard would have taken an eternity just to grasp Vasco's problems, whereas Cristóvão already knows this club inside out.
As the saying goes: if you were to make nails out of men like him, there wouldn't be a stronger nail in the world."
June 19, 1938. The Italian national team had just won the World Cup.
Naturally, the man with the metal bucket caught my eye in this photo. At first, I thought he was a stadium worker, dragged into the Italians' company in their joy, but it turned out to be the national team's masseur, Angelo Tresoldi. In those bleak times, football infrastructure was extremely simple, and the masseur's duties included, among other things, carrying a bucket of cool water, sponges, and ice onto the field to provide first aid, refresh players during matches, and provide basic medical care right on the pitch.
Apparently, Tresoldi treasured this bucket so much that he decided not to part with it even during the World Cup victory celebrations.
@sportfun
1925. Fans of Swiss side @FCBasel1893 watch their favorite team play from the wooden scaffolding of an unfinished residential building located directly behind the goals. At the time, the stadium was being heavily surrounded by residential development. The unfinished buildings and scaffolding became makeshift stands for those who wanted to watch football for free or for those who couldn't find a seat in the stadium itself.
8/8
The future won’t belong to the loudest screen
It’ll belong to the setups that can survive rotations, thin liquidity, ugly weeks, and changing tape
Peak numbers get attention
Consistency keeps capital
Explore Concrete at: https://t.co/GApgjjHmxy
1/8
We’ve all seen this little onchain circus
Fresh app launches
number goes vertical
money piles in
the screen looks genius for 9 minutes
then the crowd leaves and the magic trick dies
Most setups don’t fail late
They were fragile from day one
7/8
That’s the lane @ConcreteXYZ is pushing with @nic_builds and @dill_sl
Concrete vaults route capital, adjust positions, cut dumb manual mistakes, and lean toward steadier sources instead of pure fireworks
Concrete DeFi USDT sitting around up to 8.5% is way less sexy than some 47% farm poster
But the boring number that stays alive usually wins