BRAZIL

 Brazil’s Edmundo Alves de Souza Neto scored 187 goals during his career both for club and country. For 18 different clubs, to be precise, as Edmundo not only scored goals, but caused trouble wherever he went. He was involved in a car accident in which three people died, went AWOL from Fiorentina in order to attend Rio de Janiero’s famous carnival, caused various fights and brawls, but ultimately – here was a character that scored fantastic goals. At the inaugural World Club Championship he scored an absolute peach against a Manchester United team absent from the FA Cup that year. Here it is, complete with the wonderfully fitting local commentary...



But never mind all that. At his son’s first birthday party, Edmundo booked a carnival - complete with animals - as the main form of entertainment. Hopefully by now you will have grasped that Edmundo generally was neither a fan of decorum, nor a man to be bound by the generally accepted conventions of socially acceptable behaviour. Something that he most famously demonstrated by plying Pedrinho the monkey with beer – and whiskey – at the party. On the one hand, animal welfare groups were outraged; but on the other, this was exactly the kind of ridiculous behaviour gleefully received by those of us who otherwise had to make do with the generally anodyne nature of footballer behaviour. Quick to calm the situation, Edmundo denied everything - reassuring people that no such outrageous behaviour occurred. For the avoidance of any doubt then, here is Edmundo definitely not plying a monkey with beer... 



 Blue skies and a warm breeze calm your senses, and you feel the warm, soft sand beneath your feet and between your toes. Sandwiched between the Amazon and the ocean, Lençóis Maranhenses is a bizarre little paradise that to most, would seem like a desert due to the 1500km² of sand that continually moves and shifts as sand dunes do. Four to five times as much rain falls here as the Sahara though, so much rain in fact that during the rainy months of January to June, crystal clear lagoons form amongst the dunes – creating individual oases as far as the eye can see. Despite the short life-span of these lakes, fish manage to make themselves at home here. Incredibly, one species of fish can even remain dormant in the sand after the lakes have dried up – ready and waiting for the rains to return... 


(Credit to trip2gether on Flickr for the wonderful photo)