. Possibly not as big as Take That singer Gary Barlow’s son, but fairly massive nonetheless. Contested by Corinthians and Palmeiras, rival sides in the Brazilian city of São Paulo, the most recent one was a league match played on Monday night and won 2-0 by Corinthians, whose striker Yuri Alberto scored one of their goals. However, the 23-year-old’s smart finish at the end of a lightning fast second-half counterattack wasn’t his only strike of note in the game. While the match was still scoreless with a little over 30 minutes played at Corinthians’ NeoQuimica Arena, Palmeiras were awarded a corner but before they could take it, Alberto trotted towards the sideline to boot a beanbag or pillow thrown from the crowd off the pitch. It was only on impact that he realised it wasn’t in fact a beanbag or pillow, but the disembodied head of an actual pig.
“I almost broke my foot,” he told reporters after the game. “I thought it was a cushion, something like that. I tried to kick it hard, but it was a pig’s head, I almost injured my foot.” An incident that harked back to a similar event at Camp Nou in 2002 when Barcelona fans launched a porcine projectile in the direction of Luís Figo upon his return to the stadium with their hated rivals Real Madrid, this incident seemed to be without precedent in Brazil’s Serie A as the fount of all South American football knowledge that is Tim Vickery, who has forgotten more about the country’s football history than most of us will ever know, immediately tweeted that it was “a new one on me”.
While two arrests were made by police, the suspects were released without charge soon after and it remains unclear whether the fans who smuggled the pig’s head into the stadium with a view to Delapping it towards the pitch were supporters of Corinthians or Palmeiras. Though the sausagey finger of blame is being pointed at the former, there is every chance it could have been a visiting fan. Having spent …
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