The Americas: Goooooaaaaallllllllll!

At stake was the World Club soccer championship—Santos of Brazil v. Milan of Italy—and all Brazil braced for the familiar frenzy. Work came to a standstill; every radio and TV set was tuned to the broadcast. In Brasilia President Joao Goulart canceled all appointments and camped by his radio; congressional committees recessed; Alliance for Progress meetings in Sao Paulo were scheduled around game time. And in Rio 150,000 passionate souls, every man jack of them willing to part with his last cruzeiro, squeezed into Maracana Stadium for the games. Games? It was more like a Latin American madness.

Conk, Kick, Bash. Brazil was already behind in the three-game series, having lost the first hard fought encounter, 2-4, to the Italians in Milan. But now Santos' eleven-man team was on national ground, and with Brazil's famed "twelfth man"—the crowd—at its back. "Goooooaaaaallllllllll!" howled the mob at each Santos goal; fireworks lit the sky and fans danced in the stands. No wonder that Santos, even playing without its injured superstar Pele (TIME, April 12), won the second game, 4-2, tying it all up.

By the third game, it was hardly a game at all. Photographers charged onto the field to conk Milan players with umbrellas; broadcasters bashed Italians with microphones; the Italians retaliated by kicking Santos players in the face, the Brazilians kicked right back. Of the regulation 90 minutes, 39 were spent in furious combat, 51 playing soccer. At last, Santos booted home a penalty shot for a 1-0 victory. Returning home, one of Milan's wounded groaned: "Never in all my soccer days have I seen anything like this."

No other game interests Latin Americans so much. The continent's futbol madness began as a respectable British import. In the 1840s, the citizens of Argentina's port of Buenos Aires watched in fascination as the crews of British ships idled away dockside hours kicking a ball around. In Peru, where other British sailors spread the fever, the saying is that "the only good things we owe the British are soccer and Scotch." And of the two, soccer is by far the more intoxicating. It appeals to a Latin sense of rhythm, of masculine grace and strength.

On Rio's Copacabana beach, groups of boys and men, using heads, shoulders, bodies, legs and feet, keep a soccer ball in the air for minutes on end.

In empty Paraguay, with a population (1,900,000) smaller than that of Philadelphia, there are eleven teams in the top division alone. The Chilean Federation of Futbol carries 1,320 amateur soccer clubs and 120,000 players on its roster.