Fatty Vasco de Gama Players Face Fines

Vasco de Gama are in trouble. The usually pretty successful club (they’ve won a Brazilian championship in every decade since the ’70s, and the Copa Libertadores in 1998) are currently in the bottom four of the Campeonato Brasileiro Série A, so if the season ended right now they’d be relegated to Série B.

Perhaps worse is that Vasco are on their fifth coach of the year. Romario quit over interference (he’s the Brazilian Alan Curbishley) and then Alberto Sampaio, Antonio Lopes and Tite couldn’t put things right either. Now it’s the turn of former Seleção striker Renato, who’s back for a second spell in charge. And Renato thinks he’s spotted the problem: His players are too fat.

Anyone can spot a problem, it’s solving it that’s the hard part. And Renato’s come up with a plan to reduce the blubber in the Vasco dressing room. He’s going to start fining chubby players 300 reais ($164) per excess kilo. A bit like the airlines do when your baggage is overweight.

“A footballer only learns in two ways: when he loses his place in the team or when he is fined,” said Renato. “Players eat a lot of junk … Everyone needs to be down to their ideal weight by Friday.”

It’s not clear when Renato laid down this new law to his players, but Friday is tomorrow. And since Renato said “Friday” and not “next Friday” or “a week on Friday” it’s a safe bet that he gave the Vasco players less than a week to shed the poundage.

So I imagine there are one or two Vasco players (O Globo believe six players are overweight) who’ve been eating nothing but salads all week (dressing on the side, please) and spending unhealthy lengths of time in the sauna. Sounds like ideal preparation for a game of top flight football, eh?

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Category: South America