Futebol-crazed Brazil is falling for another kind of football
The Peninsula
Rio De Janeiro: Sitting at home in this sun soaked Brazilian metropolis,Flavia Ponce de Leon was daydreaming again of that distant, magical place....
Rio De Janeiro: Sitting at home in this sun-soaked Brazilian metropolis,Flavia Ponce de Leon was daydreaming again of that distant, magical place.
Green Bay, Wis.
She said she can envision it all: The wide roads. The frigid winters. And, most importantly, her cherished Green Bay Packers.
"The Packers are my family,” she says. "My heart is in Wisconsin.”
Ponce de Leon - who has covered the walls of her living room in green and gold Packers gear, tattooed the team’s G logo on her arm and named her cat for former linebacker Clay Matthews - is far from the traditional Cheesehead. She doesn’t speak any English. She has no history in Wisconsin. And she was born, raised and lives in Brazil, the nation that gave the world Pelé and his Beautiful Game, that has won five World Cup soccer titles, where families welcome newborns with infant-sized soccer jerseys and the only football most anyone has ever loved is futebol.
