Who hasn’t felt a chill down their spine while listening to Brazilian soccer players being interviewed? Fine that they make millions of fans crazy with joy when they score a goal, but you have no idea how insane with embarrassment they make the zillions of scholars, speakers, translators, and English students feel when they decide to try to speak English.
What hurts even more is knowing that you’ve spent a huge chuck of your salary on dictionaries, courses and exchange programs to learn English and none of this added even one zero at the end of your checking account balance. Those that simply “pruve the pass” are, once again, tripling the zeros at the end of their account balances and they only need to know how to say one word in English: Goal!
The video you are about to watch is at least going to leave your nerves frazzled, stomach churning, spine twisting, and palms sweating. Buuuut, we are not quite so affected! Anyway… Let’s proceed with the clip:
After watching this video, we come to three conclusions:
1. Five years of English classes, three years in an exchange program, private classes with your cousin, reading translations of music at Vaga-Lume, watching movies with English subtitles – none of this is going to earn you R$3,200,000.00 per month. Therefore, don’t get used to those extra zeros.
2. In life, it is definitely not important to know how to read and write, much less know how to speak English. What is important is good physical form (if you are a “phenomenon,” even this isn’t important!), horribly flashy hair (Veeeery necessary!), know how to burp the alphabet, play an instrument used in popular samba bands, have a soccer shoe custom made with a color invented just for you (like fluorescent-moss-green-orange), be able to do cartwheels, flips or other circus tricks (for the celebrations, right?), always speak in the plural first person (“We have a good game and… we give all we can and… we win the game. Cheers!”).
3. Professional soccer player is a short lived career. Nobody plays pro soccer forever, although their salary is enough to last them a lifetime if invested properly. Yet soccer players are not known for being good investors. And in most cases, even the great players aren’t that great. In other words, let us be students, scholars and English speakers, since we shall last forever.
Long live us!
