The US National Football League (NFL) breaks new ground in its global expansion strategy tomorrow when the Philadelphia Eagles and Green Bay Packers face off in the first-ever grid-iron game staged in Brazil.
For one night only, the land of Pele and ‘The Beautiful Game’ will get a rare glimpse into the bone-crunching world of American football as the Packers and Eagles collide at Sao Paulo’s Neo Quimica Arena, the 46,000-seat home of soccer club Corinthians.
The regular season fixture is part of the NFL’s increasingly ambitious plans to spread the US’ most popular sport to new territories following previous international fixtures in London, Munich, Frankfurt, Toronto and Mexico City. Spain is to host a regular-season game next year at the Santiago Bernabeu Stadium, home of European soccer giant Real Madrid.
Photo: AP
The NFL has said there are about 38 million American football fans in Brazil, of whom 8.3 million are described as avid. That makes Brazil the second-largest international fan base after Mexico, the league said.
The NFL has made it clear that it sees Brazil as a regular venue for games in the future, with tomorrow’s game effectively establishing a beachhead for the sport.
“The fundamental strategy is really a focus on becoming a true global sports property and growing the game and the fan base around the world,” NFL executive vice president of international events Peter O’Reilly said. “We’ve seen when we’ve gone to a market with a game like Germany a few years ago, where we’ve committed to play, you’ve seen the demand, the passion and then the impact.”
Photo: AFP
However, no other sport is likely to dethrone soccer as Brazil’s national obsession, and tomorrow’s NFL game would be competing for attention with Brazil’s 2026 World Cup qualifying game against Ecuador in Curitiba.
Yet the South American country has a long record of embracing US culture, with the NBA increasingly regarding Brazil as a key international market.
In the NFL’s case, the sport’s profile was also boosted by quarterback icon Tom Brady’s 13-year marriage to Brazilian supermodel Gisele Bundchen. However, the buzz around tomorrow’s fixture in Sao Paulo has not been shared by some of the participants, with Philadelphia players A.J. Brown and Darius Slay revealing that they had been advised not to leave the team hotel due to concerns over crime.
Slay said that while he was looking forward to the fixture, he did not want to go Brazil.
“They already told us not to leave the hotel. They told us we can’t do too much going on, because the crime rate is crazy,” Slay said. “I’m like ‘NFL, why would you want to send us somewhere with a crime rate this high?’”
Slay later apologized for the remarks, insisting he had not meant to cause offense.
“I’m looking forward to playing in your beautiful country,” he wrote on X.
In purely sporting terms, Philadelphia coach Nick Sirianni would be looking for a fast start from new signing Saquon Barkley, while hoping to see his team adjust following the retirement of center Jason Kelce and defensive tackle Fletcher Cox.
Green Bay coach Matt LaFleur meanwhile would look to rising star quarterback Jordan Love to lead a young Packers team to victory.
Former European champions Celtic exited the UEFA Champions League in the qualifiers after a 3-2 penalty shoot-out defeat at Kazakhstan’s Kairat Almaty on Tuesday, following two goalless legs in the playoff tie. Kairat are to compete in the competition proper for the first time, while Norway’s Bodo/Glimt and Cyprus’s Pafos also secured debut appearances after coming through the playoffs. Celtic’s night ended in disappointment as they missed three penalties in the shoot-out, Daizen Maeda failing with the decisive spot-kick. The slugfest of a match went into extra-time with neither side finding the net and few overall chances, echoing the first
Rangers on Wednesday bowed out of the UEFA Champions League playoffs with a humiliating 6-0 defeat at the hands of Club Brugge which piles further pressure on head coach Russell Martin, while SL Benfica secured a place in the competition proper at the expense of Jose Mourinho’s Fenerbahce. The Glasgow giants traveled to Belgium right up against it after losing 3-1 at home in last week’s first leg, when they conceded three times in the opening 20 minutes. They never looked like turning the tie around as Club Brugge took the lead inside five minutes at the Jan Breydelstadion through Nicolo Tresoldi
Noah Lyles on Thursday warmed up for the upcoming athletics world championships by chasing down Olympic champion Letsile Tebogo to win the 200m at the Diamond League final. Lyles trailed Tebogo at the start, but gradually erased the deficit over the final 100m and pipped the Botswana sprinter to the line by centimeters. Lyles, the Olympic 100m champion and reigning world champion in both the 100m and 200m, clocked 19.74 seconds in a slight headwind. Tebogo was 0.02 seconds behind. It was Lyles’ sixth Diamond League title, a record for track athletes. “Six, that’s a big number,” Lyles said. “Shoot, that’s another record on
Australian Alex de Minaur reached the second week of the US Open for the third year in a row with little fanfare on Saturday and said he intended to keep winning until the tournament organizers were forced to give him better billing. Despite being the eighth seed and a quarter-finalist last year at Flushing Meadows, De Minaur’s third-round match against German Daniel Altmaier was scheduled for Court 17 — the smallest of the four stadium venues in the precinct. “It is a little bit of a headscratcher for me. I’m not gonna lie,” he told reporters after progressing 6-7 (9/7), 6-3, 6-4,
RSS