A "pelada" is a free-form game with few rules, and it can be played anywhere -- all you need is a ball and a group of friends. Because it's easy and low-cost, this pastime is widely played in Rio de Janeiro, where boys and girls learn to take their first kicks at school, in the streets, or even at home.
Pelada – Rio's Past
Image description: This is an old photograph of a street in a residential neighborhood. The image is in black and white, with a slight sepia tone. In the lower part of the image, we see children playing soccer on the sidewalk. On the left, there are red brick houses with tiled roofs. In the center, a person walks along the sidewalk. On the right, there are more houses and a large tree. In the background, we see a structure that appears to be a school or a public building.One of the temples for pickup soccer players is the Aterro do Flamengo, which since 1965 has offered lit, free courts for the sport. During the day, soccer schools and more organized teams occupy the park. At night and in the early morning hours, the fields are taken over by employees of restaurants, clubs, and bars, and that's when the pickup game turns into a party.
Pickup football fields – Flamengo landfill. Parque do Flamengo website
Image description: This is a photograph of a park with outdoor soccer fields. On the left side, we see green fields surrounded by trees and lit by tall light poles. Moving to the right, we notice more fields and green areas. In the background, there is a stretch of blue water, possibly a sea or lake, with some distant structures. Further beyond, we see a mountain range covered in green vegetation. The spatial arrangement is linear, with the fields in the foreground and the water and mountains in the background.Unlike field football, this sport does not require marking out an area and center circle, a referee, or uniforms (it's possible for a shirted team to play against a shirtless one). Matches last for a set amount of time or until the number of goals agreed upon by the participants is reached. Teams are chosen by odds or evens and don't have a fixed number of players, sometimes reaching 11 on each side. Goalkeepers are a harder choice: they are usually the worst players, and ball owners are almost always excluded from the role.
Rio residents helped give the word another meaning, and because of its ramshackle connotation, the term "pelada" ended up becoming, here in Rio, a synonym for a bad, low-quality professional game. Even the players didn't escape it -- when they don't play well in a match, they get accused of being "peladeiros."
