American REACTS to How Brazilian Slums Became Football Factories *Favelas to Fame* 

Associating Brazil's success in soccer with favelas is shallow prejudice. Some of Brazil's greatest players never lived in a favela, some that I remember off the top of my head: Kaka, Pepe, Coutinho (the original), Gilmar, Diego, Juninho Pernambucano, Zico, Roberto Dinamite, Rivelino, Gerson, Tostão, Sócrates, Falcão... . the queue is huge and they have never been from favelas. They were from wealthy families. What sets Brazil apart is: It is the largest country in the world where football is the first sport. Children play in the street, in physical education classes, at recess, on the beach, on dirt fields, everywhere, a boy's first toy in Brazil is a soccer ball. Everyone plays football in Brazil. Inevitably, talents will emerge. Many of them will get lost along the way, but many will reach the tip of the spear.

Neymar in the age of 13 already have a salary 10x bigger than the mid Brazilian people

Being Argentine, and although I love our football and they have always been our rivals, I have deep respect and admiration for Brazilian football. I have lived there, even in the fabelas, and it is a joy to see them playing on the beaches with such absolutely incredible dominance...

So basically, they learn football from a young age, get into a good local team, get scouted by a huge team and BAM! They’re superstars.

From the little I've seen of how football is played in America compared to everywhere else, is that in Amertica its a burocratic experience, you need to pay for it, parents need to take their kids to practice, you need a place to do it, a court or a field, in Brazil and I imagine its the same everywhere else, its just a game you can play anywhere. You don't need a club, a field, court, or even a ball. Growing up I would play most of the time on the street in front of my house, sometimes on dirt fields, we would even play on a hill sometimes, some times we would have a ball, other times we would just use anything we could kick, I've played with sock balls, with paper balls, rocks, bottles, even a coconut. Another point is that we would play with however many people were available, its not always about having a goal and scoring, we had variations on the game that could be played with 3 people, 2, or multiple people at once, some times it would be a team game, some times it would be everyone against everyone.

Kyrie grew up playing basketball with a missing pieces backboard. So he perfected his finishes. that’s why he is able to find those crazy finishes. Litteraly he had to play on missing backboard pieces. It’s the same thing in other sports. I learned to play basketball in Africa on a court with a lot of sand so my grip and handle is immaculate now😂😂. When you try to recreate those And 1 mixtapes moves on sand at 13 years old..it’s though but after it becomes easy when you play on a regular court. Football is the same. We played with everything, tennis ball became a football. Oranges, empty bottles, it doesn’t even need to be round😂. If you can kick it, you play with it. It’s fun. But it helps your focus and touch. ` when you play on dirt for example, nyou need to predict where the ball will go next because the terrain is not smooth, it can hit a rock and go somewhere else. So you have to predict it, react fast and accordingly. When you begin to play on a normal pitch.. it’s just easy for you. Piece of cake.

Im loving to see your learning process about Brazilian football. Yeah, football for us is part of our way of life, but for those who comes from the favelas, its a way to actually and literally LIVE. So its no coincidence that our best players came from the favelas.

As a Brazilian I can say the way we play is just different, we like to play for fun, that's why most brazilians retires early, we have that "party mentality", the first things we like to learn in football is the skills, the way we "show off" and dance too is not to humiliate the opponent, it's just our culture

Ronaldinho really can be described as a slum kid? His brother was playing for a big brazilian club when Dinho was young, so I think he had a good life at that point.

this is why brazilians are so interested and amazing, ronaldinho was the essence of football, the guy was as if football himself decided to birth the son of football.

One of the biggest problems with football development in America is that the pathways for these sort of stories don't exist. If you want to play high level travel soccer in the US you need to pay thousands of dollars every year, making it a pay-to-play sport. This means that a HUGE chunk of the talent pool in America simply don't get the access to high level coaching or the opportunity to be seen by scouts, simply because they lack the funds to join a team. And unfortunately, the alternative method of honing your skills in the streets isn't really an option because the US doesn't have a strong culture of pickup soccer in the way it might for pickup basketball for example. So a kid might be in the street looking to play soccer, but if there's no one else around who wants to play, there's not much they can do. Whereas somewhere like Brazil you wont have that problem, because EVERYONE wants to play, all the time. So America doesn't really generate these creative, "streetball" flair type talents, because the environment for that isn't there. Instead, all the top American players tend to come from a pool of highly structured, highly athletic, but creatively limited kids who could afford to be in the pay-to-play system. And until that gets solved, the talent cap of American soccer is always going to be handicapped vs the rest of the world.

I think there is a lot of generalization here. There are no beaches in São Paulo, Belo Horizonte or Porto Alegre. Many kids, even poor, learned to play in futsal courts. Many players are already in big clubs playing at nice pitches at young ages. Ronaldinho... his older brother Assis had signed a professional contract with Gremio when Ronaldinho was a small kid. They bought a new house with pool with his first salary. Ronaldinho didn´t really grew up playing at the favela and in horrible pitches. Kaká was middle class.

when you talk about how football doesn't require a lot to practice, Pelé was known for practicing with balls made out of socks in his youth.

Corey check out the 1970 Brazilan national team, it is still regarded as the greatest football team to play the game, the skill they played was out of this world , it had flair skill that was out of this world.

You NEED to watch a documentary serie made by HBO, the name is "Romário: O Cara". I dont know whats the name in english, but im pretty sure that u can find. Its a really good serie.

Crazy to think that Rio "favelas" just gave to the world Romario, Ronaldo, Adriano and Vini Jr.

Great reaction! About the Brazilian football, the best video that I've saw is the "brazilian football's greatest debate: the state championships", by Brazilian Fury. It really explain how diferent is the format of the Brazilian leagues

This applies to all areas of the world where there is poverty, but Brazil is the biggest example. In the states, little Timmy can just get placed in an academy if his parents pockets are deep enough. In Brazil, there is no money to place them in academies, so talent is your ticket the top. This is why US is so far behind. They lack hunger, passion and drive, because there is no support from the country itself.

The favelas are a terrible place to grow up beacuase of poverty and the mafias but if the mafia leaders in the favelas see that some kid has talent from football they help him to achive his dream and provide for the family and free them from the poor live in the favela

Great reaction bud!

Love the Newcastle flag, nice backdrop

Think Raymar does good vids on the career of individual footballers he talks about ronaldo and futsal there

Yeah...all South Americans that are extremely good at football, just know they come from poverty❤

Ronaldinho by the age of 5 have moved away the favelas btw

That Newcastle flag in the back there is pretty much a clear sign this dude's a 'plastic' lol

its true brazillians are really gifted and talented but not only because of those reasons but also because they are alot and they have football culture, 200 million,so yeah, they will produce amazing players of course... and the mesmering dribble, u arent wrong. it is messi, messi is the best dribbler and has better magic than any brazilian ever born.. People like to say neymar and ronaldinho are the skillest, they are not, it is messi, they confuse tricks with drible. messi is the most gifted, skilled and better .. but yes, brazilian is a football nation but not everything is right in the video. Portugal is way more impressive, with a population of 10 million people, has a better national team than brazil and many more, maybe the most talented squad on euro 2024. but yeah great video, i just thought some things were misleading.

man not all Brazilians come from Favela

fun fact: ronaldo, ronaldinho, pelé, romario, garrincha are not from favelas.

Dude, I know Americans have a lot of difficulty with geography, but try to take a look at the cardinal points. you are using the term west in a very strange way, because you are watching a video about a country that is as far west as yours and you explain our differences by saying: "they don't understand this especially here, in the WEST, in AMERICA"(?? ?). I'm just not going to explain anything to you about the name of the continent, because then it really is homonymous with your country and also so as not to seem offensive. But differentiating ourselves by "west" isn't possible. It's too much for me. If you're too lazy to look at all the cardinal points, at least see the meaning of "North" please