|
|
Sport (Sport Club do Recife)
Sport play out of Recife in north-east Brazil – they are massive rivals of neighbors; Nautico. In actual fact the club was founded due to a split between two factions within the Nautico team set-up.
It was Guilherme de Aquino Fonseca who concretized the forming of Sport Club do Recife and in 1905 arranged their first game against an English 11, whereby the spoils were shared at 1-1.
The fixtures between the two city rivals is referred to as the the Classic of "Classics, and we have to go back to 1909 for the first Classico, which was witnessed by 4000 Supporters.
In 1987, Sport won a National title, but in all fairness, it’s a dubious claim and hotly, hotly contested. There was a dispute and the biggest clubs broke away to form their own league – Sport subsequently shared first place with Guarani, there was supposed to be a play-off between the top 2 clubs of the breakaway elite; Flamengo and Internacional, the play-off never materialized (on account of both Flamengo and Internacional refusing to partake). This led to a Sport versus Guarani final match, which Sport duly won 1-0 – and were declared Champions, albeit disputed Champions.
Sport Recife play at Estádio Ilha do Retiro a ground with a 35,000 Capacity.
As is common with football clubs all over the world, Sport have several torcidas organizadas, or groups of fans who view themselves as true, undying supporters, some of these groups have a hooligan element attached.
The most notorious of the gangs are the , Young Fans, or , Torcida Jovem, then there’s the Island Gang (A Gang da Ilha). Less notorious are the Earth shaker’s, the Lions Breath and The Island Lions.
Amusingly, some of these groups have store rooms at the ground whereby, on match day, they collect their drums, flags and other musical instruments (particularly to play Frevo) from the stores and flaunt themselves on the terraces.
|
