Ladies and gentlemen: Ronaldinho

Always with that beautiful smile, uh Ronaldinho?

If you have been waiting to see Ronaldinho wearing the manto sagrado, tonight is the big night. Tell your mum you’ll miss the first class tomorrow. Tell your girlfriend you’re having an important business meeting tonight. Tell your boss it’s your anniversary and you took your wife out for dinner and that’s why you’ll be late. This is one of those times when is acceptable to lie. Or if you prefer, you can just tell them you’ll watch the world’s best in the world’s greatest, but I don’t know if this is a good idea.

37,000 fans bought their tickets and the Engenhão will be crowded expecting to see magic being made on the field. Before that, Ronaldinho is the one who will watch some magic. The fans are planning on greeting R10 and the team with a huge mosaic, putting some red and black into that blue stadium.

Flamengo vs Nova Iguaçu kick off is at 10pm local time (that is GMT-2) and I’m positive that buying some beers, finding a good streaming and staying at home is the best you can do tonight. After all, you’ll not only see Ronaldinho wearing Zico’s shirt but also check why we’re called the world’s greatest when that mosaic is formed.

If you’re looking for a good streaming site, here is one. It’s in Portuguese, I know, but all you have to do is find where “Jogo 1″, “Jogo 2″ and “Jogo 3″ are. The three of them are links for streaming. And don’t forget to turn it on before 10pm or you’ll miss the magic coming from the stands.

Dinho’s debut is not the only interesting I have to tell you. We’ve won two more matches, including the clássico (can I still call it clássico?) against Vasco. But that is not something we can brag about these days as Vasco have 0 (ZERO) points after four games. In the 2-1 victory, Thiago Neves played his second match and scored his first goal (and what a goal!) for Flamengo. Deivid scored the first goal, putting an end in his goal drought, which is very important as from now on he’ll have Ronaldinho serving him spectacular goal chances and I don’t want to see him missing each one of them.

In the midweek Fla beat Americano 2-0 with Wanderley (Deivid’s substitute, although he didn’t sub our #9 that day) scoring twice in the second half.

Back to tonight’s match, it’s possible that the Argentine Dario Bottinelli makes his debut as well. There is a problem with his papers at FIFA though and that can put him out of the match. Let’s hope Fla can solve this problem in time for the match. (Update: Bottinelli is ready to play tonight)

On a quick note, the sponsorship deal with Batavo is over and Fla is now looking for a new company willing to print their logo on our shirt. For tonight’s game Visa and Cielo have agreed to pay us R$900k. The money spent on Ronaldinho will soon be back in the team’s bank account. Gladly.

Category: 2011, Rio State Championship