Luke Judge

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For us younger folks, Brazil soccer is great because that’s how it’s meant to be…we take that as a natural order of things, having grown up with the Brazilian soccer team’s successes in the World Cups of the 1990s.

But the myth of Brazilian soccer was born a lot earlier, in times when soccer started to become a worldwide “plague” and there are a lot of people who attribute this internalization of soccer to the Brazilian team of the 50s, a team that was lead to success by one of the most preeminent figures in sports, the famous soccer player Pele.

Born Edson Arantes do Nascimento, Pele climbed a steep mountain from living his youth in a poor Brazilian family, to becoming one of the most beloved figures in the modern history of sports. His father was a footballer himself, playing for Fluminense in the Brazilian league and it was only natural that young Pele would follow his father’s footsteps in the game.

He wasn’t always known as Pele though. Rumor has it that this nickname was given to him in primary school, as he kept misspelling the name of one of his favorite players at that time, Vasco Da Gama’s goalkeeper Bile.

His schoolmates gave him this new nickname and mostly made fun of him, so he obviously disliked it; so much that he punched the fellow classmate that coined the nicknamed. However, in time, he gradually became used to it and even started liking it and it wasn’t long before everyone knew the soccer wonderkid as Pele.

Living in poverty, he couldn’t afford soccer equipment, nor a soccer ball. He shined shoes for an extra coin that would help him and his friends stitch up a newspaper-filled sock to use as a football. He formed a team with his neighbors from the Sete de Setembro street and even participated in a youth tournament, where the team earned the nickname “the shoeless ones” because none of the kids could afford to waste their walking shoes (if any) on playing soccer.

A few years later, each member of the team worked hard for the extra money to get a proper pair of shoes and renamed their team to Ameriquinha. Participating in numerous youth tournaments with Ameriquinha, Pele made a name for himself at a tender age for his prowess in front of goal, becoming top scorer in almost all of these tournaments.

At the tender age of 15, he caught the eyes of one of the biggest teams in Brazil, FC Santos, who offered him a contract and by 16 he was already a member of the senior squad. He spent almost his entire career at Santos, since European transfers weren’t that popular back, although the final 2 years of his career were spent at New York Cosmos, before Pele finally hanged his boots.

Pele made his debut in the Brazilian soccer team in the same year he debuted at Santos’ senior squad, when he was just 16 years old. Amazingly, he was taken on to the 1958 World Cup squad, at age 17, becoming the youngest player in the competition. He even scored a crucial goal in the quarterfinals against Wales, a goal which took Brazil past that stage and into the semis.

But Pele was saving the best for the final: meeting Sweden, he scored a magnificent goal, lobbing the ball past a defender and volleying it into the net, eventually winning the final for Brazil. After the match ended, the effort and the joy bundled up and the 17-year old Pele couldn’t take it, passing out on the field and needing medical attention.

As a soccer player, Pele attended 3 more World Cups, between 1962 and 1970, winning the first and latter. He was the first player ever to score in 4 different World Cups and in 1970 he achieved a unique performance that boosted him to the heights of international soccer: he scored 1,000 official goals for club and country.

Although many dispute this record or try to bring it down, saying that soccer wasn’t as defensive or tactical back than as it is today (which is partially true), his merit of being a major stand pole on the international soccer stage between the mid 50s all the way to the late 70s should not be undermined. Named best soccer player in the World and athlete of the 20th century, Pele now acts as an ambassador for soccer and fair play.

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The Russian wine market continues to be an unpredictable concoction of local producers’, bottlers’ and importers’ interests, mixed with ever-changing state regulations, weak distribution channels and local and global crises that trigger drastic changes every now and then. You never know what will happen tomorrow.

Overall wine imports in 2009 accounted for a total of 430 million litres of still, sparkling and bulk wine, down 20% from 2008. The top 10 suppliers, representing 80% of all imports, were (in descending order): Spain, Ukraine, Italy, France, Argentina, Moldova, Bulgaria, Brazil and Germany. About 24.9 million litres of the imported wine was ‘of unknown origin’, enough to put this category in the top 10. Italy, Ukraine, Moldova and Brazil are those that showed some or substantial growth in exports to Russia during 2009. For the first time in many years, Chile is not among the top 10 suppliers (being number 11 with 18 million litres).

Owing to changes in regulations earlier in the year that raised duties for imported bulk wine from 5% to 20%, bringing them in line with the duties on all other types of wine, bulk wine imports continued to plummet in 2009. Russia stopped, or practically stopped, importing bulk wine from Ukraine, South Africa, Uruguay, Bulgaria and France in the second half of 2009. The inflow from Spain, Brazil and Chile remained stable, while that from Argentina and Italy nearly halved. All in all, Russia imported 105.8 million litres of bulk wine, 60% down from 2008. This is official data from Russian Customs’ office.

There are, however, some other figures in circulation such as the ones taken from the Moscow Independent Wine Club (MIWC) and published recently by Vitisphère in France. They claim a total of 94.5 million hl of overall imports and local wine production, which would make Russia the world’s biggest consumer of wine with 67.5 litres per capita a year, exactly 10 times greater than the real figure. The error comes from the fact that internal Russian spirit statistics are done in ‘dal’ – a measure for vodka equal to 10 litres. The French just took the dals and replaced them with hectolitres without doing the re-calculations. The second error – concerning bulk wine imports – comes from the fact that MIWC has put together the bulk with the bottled or packed wines in volumes bigger than two litres (ie double magnums or bigger, plus bag in box). Thus they state 250 million litres of bulk (corrected from dals). The customs figure is 233 million litres for the two categories so it seems coherent.

The latter category (bottled/packed wine over two litres) is the fastest growing, even faster than in the first half of 2009, registering a 275% increase compared with the whole of 2008. Obviously this is filling the gap left by the rapid decline in locally bottled imported bulk wine. Ukraine and Spain control 50% of this market with Argentina, Brazil and Italy catching up. What comes from Ukraine incidentally is mostly re-exported Moldavian bulk wine (bottled, packed or as is).

The bottled (or packed) wine in containers of less than two litres is now the leading import category with a 41% share of all imports. Here there is a change, with France having overtaken Bulgaria to claim first place. This doesn’t mean that France increased its exports to Russia, however, just that they declined less steeply than those from other countries. The total decrease of bottled wine imports is -20%, varying from -2.4% for Moldova to -52.2% for Bulgaria in the top 10 countries of origin. The only country that has showed growth is Italy (+5.5%).

Sparkling wine imports showed very little change (-6,6% compared with 2008), with Italy still holding the lion’s share with 8.4 million litres (45.6%) – viva Asti Martini! France (third most important source) is 22% down, Ukraine (second) is 48% up and that’s it.

Russian wine and ‘wine’

As for wine produced in Russia itself, if we look at the corrected figures of MIWC we see that local wineries declared 225 million litres of wine produced during 2009. The wine bottled in Russia in 2009 accounted for 690 million litres. This means that Russian grapes account for 32% of national production needs and 20% of national consumption, this last figure having been confirmed to Jancis after her visit to Russia in September 2009. The question is how do you produce a total of 690 million litres from 225 million litres made from Russian vines and 106 million litres of imported bulk wine?

Most of the wine imported in bulk is chaptalised and diluted with water down to 10.5% alcohol from the initial 12-13%. If one assumes that most locally produced wine is treated in the same way (sugared and diluted), one can account for 60% of the liquid bottled as ‘wine’ in Russia. What is the remaining 40% then? There are two possibilities or a mix of both: either Russian customs consider the flexi-tanks as ‘packed wine in volumes of more than two litres’ (and that will cover another 23%); or all the rest (or part of it) is a chemical mixture of water, spirits, sugar, colouring and aroma substances that is declared, state certified (sic) and sold as wine! This means 200 to 230 million litres of fraudulent wine is officially sold on the market every year.

Russian wine producers may strive to make good wine by world standards, but clearly some of them are also importing wine in bulk and there are no official controls on whether it is bottled separately, or perhaps in some cases used to raise the quality of their own production. A second set of laws that should presumably regulate wines of denominated origin has not yet been adopted as the state is busy as usual regulating vodka production. You can find Russian wines stating ‘appellation of origin’ in English (with the name of the appellation missing) on the front label even though this has no legal meaning at all.

With the economic crisis, the supermarket shelves are filled with cheaper and cheaper wine. Even in Moscow, which had tended to overlook the traditional Soviet taste for sweet wines, you can find more and more semi-sweet wines not only imported in bulk and bottled locally but also produced and bottled in Chile, Spain, Argentina, France etc and imported by unknown entities. On the other hand, Russian wineries have started to release ‘top cuvées’ at incredibly high prices such as Myskhako’s barrel-aged Chardonnay that trades at the price of a good Chablis, or Gai Kodzor’s wines at the price of Châteauneuf (their consultant is Alain Dugas from Château la Nerthe). But even local wine critics generally supportive of the local wine industry find it difficult to understand how the producers can ask for such prices.

The new customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan formed in January 2009 has created an additional mess in wine imports with the new licences. Rumours are that Russia not only took the licensing system from the neighbouring countries, but also that the state plans to adopt their national standards. Our neighbours did not invent them but merely translated the EU ones. This gives us hope that sooner or later the Russian wine market will not be as messy as it is right now. The question, however, is when?

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Vista del Lago’s soccer team has set themselves up well for the second half of the Sierra Valley Conference season.

The Eagles are off to a 3-0-1 start in league play, beating last year’s defending Division II section champion Oak Ridge, 3-0, and wins against Cordova and Union Mine. The only blemish to an otherwise clean league record is a 1-1 tie against Ponderosa on March 22.

“We let our emotions overrule our intelligence in that one,” Vista coach Jimmy Frazelle said. “We didn’t play our game; we had no rhythm and the result wasn’t what we wanted. We had some shots that we should have put away but we didn’t.”

Vista led 1-0 at halftime on a goal by Taylor Landuk, but Ponderosa got the equalizer by Vista keeper Megan Heddinger off a rebound and earned the tie.

Any disappointment the Eagles had following the tie quickly dissipated after the 3-0 win over Oak Ridge on March 24. Kayla Hodge scored twice and Annika Jansson also found the back of the net in the big win.

“It felt great to beat a top-notch team in Oak Ridge,” Frazelle said. “We knew we had to beat them to be at the top of the league. We got a quick goal and got them on their heels and then got another. It was the best game we’ve played this season.”

Vista, 7-1-1 on the season, doesn’t play again until traveling to Galt on April 12.

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