Robert Carry speaks to Luciano Oliveira, one of the star players to emerge from the Brian Kerr/Sari Inter-Continental League, about his life in Dublin, his compatriots’ love of soccer, and his plans for the future.
Despite missing six games in the Brian Kerr/Sari Inter-Continental League due to work commitments, and with his team finishing sixth in the league, Brazil’s star player Luciano Oliveira still managed to notch up an impressive tally of 25 goals for the season. But though they didn’t clinch the top spot this year, Oliveira is confident Brazil can take the title next time round. “It’s hard to explain how important football is,” he says.
“It’s the most important thing in Brazil and everybody plays. You start playing when you are five and if you are no good then you start supporting a team instead.”
The reasons behind Brazil’s legendary soccer prowess may be something of a mystery to the rest of the world, but Oliveira believes it is actually quite simple: “We have a very big country and everybody plays. If everybody plays you have more shots at finding a good player.”
Oliveira, who came to Ireland to earn money to put towards his education and to improve his English, pointed out that the exalted status players enjoy, even in the lower leagues, adds extra incentive: “Every city, even small ones, has a football team and if you play for them the people know you and look up to you.”
A willing participant in his country’s all-consuming passion for the beautiful game, Oliveira started looking for a league to play in as soon as he arrived in Ireland 16 months ago.
He recalls: “When I arrived in Dublin, a friend and I were looking for a team to play with. Somebody told us about the Sari league and that there would be a Brazilian team playing. I went to Fairview Park for training, I got picked and I have been playing for the team since then.”
His involvement with the league presented Oliveira with an opportunity to mix with other Brazilians, but it also gave him the chance to meet people from various other backgrounds.
“One really nice thing about the league is that it gives you the chance to build relationships with people you wouldn’t meet otherwise,” he says. “I never knew anyone from Ghana or Zimbabwe, for example, before I started to play for the Brazil team. When we play football, we are all getting to meet people of nationalities that we only would have seen on TV or in a newspaper.”
Oliveira – who juggles his soccer playing with two jobs – found that his country’s reputation often preceded his team, and the opposition always seemed that bit more driven to win when the Brazilian scalp was to be had. “All the teams were hard,” he says. “Every team really wanted to win when they played against Brazil.”
But although the games were invariably tough, it was the Eastern Europeans that the Sao Paulo-born striker found most difficult to dispatch.
“The Polish teams were always hard,” he says, “but the toughest team to play against were the Romanians. They never give up. They just run all the time. They really, really hate to lose.”
Three of the top four teams in the league were Polish, but Oliveira is adamant that the dominance of the East Europeans will be broken next time round – and that Brazil are the team to do it.
“Poland will not win again next year. This year was the first time there was a Brazilian team in the league. We also had problems with the number of people turning up for games,” he explains. “One match we would have 22 players and the next we might only have seven.
“But now there are Brazilians who have come to Dublin who were professional back home. Now we can make a very good team.”
So will the goal machine’s skills be on display for the planned new-look Brazil side next season? “If I am still in Dublin I would like to stay in the league, of course I would,” he says. “It’s a very nice league to play in.”
That may, however, be a big ‘if’: “I plan to go back to Brazil at the end of the year, but it might just be temporary. I have my ticket until November, but I don’t know if I will come back to Dublin.”
The player, who is living away from home for the first time, adds: “I am happy here but it is not my country. My friends and my family are not here and I really miss them.
“If I got an opportunity to play football here for a professional team I would stay, but if I’m working in the kind of jobs I’m doing know [cleaner and kitchen porter], and living in a house with a lot of people, I think it would be better to go home. But it has been the best experience of my life.”
