Play Football

José Medeiros had been in the Xingu National Park for around 40 days to document the initiation ritual of young Ikpeng indigenous people when he captured the image of a boy making a perfect bicycle. The boy is Payawo Ikpeng, who was 12 years old at the time.

During the coronavirus pandemic, without being able to play with friends, the boy consoles himself by practicing embaixadinhas in the Taipas neighborhood, in the North Zone of the capital of São Paulo. Known as Duracell, he is a lowland football player in the region.

It was in the backlands of Bahia that Levi photographed the two boys. The ball was light, there was a lot of wind, and many of the shots went wide of the goal. “I think this is the true essence of our football: joy, dreams and the beauty of our people in one image”, says Levi.

Photography by Alexandre Gondim taken in Brasília Teimosa, a community next to Boa Viagem beach, in Recife (PE). The sand where the two children play football was once occupied by stilts, precarious constructions that rose from the ground to face the fury of the waves.

This photograph brings together Caroline love for her children, Isaac and Benício, and her passion for football, passed down in her family from generation to generation. One of the expressions of this feeling is the button game, always present in the photographer's childhood. 

In the image of Eder Jean Furtado da Silva, residents of Afuá, in Pará, play football after a day of work fishing, handling açaí and extracting wood. “They can stop doing anything except playing football after work”, says Eder.

The left side of the image, the letters painted on the wall refer to the Municipal Department. The houses marked with the acronym would be removed, which caused wear and tear and clashes between the residents and the public authorities of Morro da Providência, in Rio de Janeiro.

This photograph was taken in São Miguel dos Milagres, Alagoas. Jailton Rodrigues da Costa was working when he realized that sunset was approaching. A friend warned him about the boys playing ball in the sand.

This photograph was taken during a football match between kids in the city of Afuá, in Pará. What caught Leandro Reichert's attention was the field made of wood sawdust: due to the local geography, the only way to play ball is to cover it. the floor with this material.

The scene was recorded by chance by Rafael Tecchio, with his cell phone. It was late afternoon at Praia do Morro, in Guarapari (ES). Upon leaving the beach, he noticed that the entire shore was filled with people playing high-flying games.

The image was captured in 2018, during the men's World Cup in Russia. Ruy Barros was producing the series “Copa nos Bairros”. The photo appeared during halftime of Brazil's third game in the group stage, when children ran to improvise a fight in the street.

It was during work in Marapanim (PA) that Ubirajara da Costa Machado captured the image of boys playing ball in the river – the same river that was used by the community to wash clothes, cool off, and also served as a football pitch.