The Wandering Blog: Briosa!

I'll will never forget the 20th of May, 2012.
73 years later my team won the Portuguese Cup once more, realising the dream that every fan of the black shirt, the students from Coimbra, the mythical Académica had: to have the chance to see the real "Briosa" rise again!

In the run-up to the game, played in the National Stadium, in Jamor (outskirts of Lisbon), I had the sense that everybody from Coimbra had come down to Lisbon, and when I arrived at the south stand I felt at home, in a sea of black shirts and scarves. There was some nail-biting all around, but also a feeling that this was gonna be a day to remember.
The Sporting fans had the numbers on their side, but there was no shutting us up. We chanted "It's Coimbra!" and cried "Académica!", we clapped our hands, we sang songs that go back generations, and we yelled "BRIOSA!" as if to exercise some hypothetical demon that would stand in our way.
It was around 7 PM when the ref decided that that was that. The score was 1-0 in our favour, thanks to a goal scored by Coimbra's latest hero - Marinho, scored in the 4th minute of the first half. That was that, and Briosa she was once more!

A jump and a shout: "We won! We won! Briosa! Briosa! Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuck!"

Everywhere I looked I saw people hugging and kissing each other, crying tears of joy or just letting out the tension of a much suffered game. I hugged my friends, we where crying also. I thought about my dad and how he would have loved to have witnessed that day, to see his beloved team great again. I wondered how many people were thinking what I was thinking. How many people, like me, we initiated into this great love by their fathers and wished they were there on that day. I grabbed my black scarf with both hands - my father's old scarf - and I smiled.