A very interesting and cordial match took place today at the Karađorđe stadium, where the Olympic football team of Brazil this week is preparing to perform at the Olympic Games.
Even before the arrival of the South Americans in Novi Sad, a slogan was hung on the west stand of Karađorđe with “Welcome, friends!” written in Portuguese and Serbian, along with the coats of arms of FK Vojvodina and the Football Association of Brazil, and a warm welcome and a pleasant stay in Serbian Athens, the president of the Old Lady Dragoljub Samardžić today personally wished the Brazilians.
In a conversation with the manager of the Brazilian Olympic team and former celebrated national team member Claudio Branco, Dragoljub Samardžić wished the Seleção good luck at the upcoming Olympic Games and expressed hope that FK Vojvodina and Novi Sad will soon again have the opportunity to host world football masters, the kind that the country that is the only one that has been world champion five times always had.
Also, Dragoljub Samardžić and Claudio Branco exchanged jerseys of Vojvodina and Brazil, as well as other special gifts, and the Brazilians were especially delighted when they received a framed photo from 1972, which shows Pele and Ilija Pantelić, the best Brazilian football player and the best Serbian goalkeeper of all time.
On that occasion, they reminded that Vojvodina had winter preparations in Brazil in 1971, where, among other things, they played with some of the most famous Brazilian teams, such as Vasco da Gama (1-1) and Sao Paulo (3-0), and that a year earlier in Novi Sad it had the opportunity to host Corinthians, in a friendly match in which it won 5-3 and in which Ilija Pantelić said goodbye to the Vojvodina jersey. The following year, Voša played a friendly match in Novi Sad against Sao Paulo, and in 1972 against Fluminense, in a great game that ended with the result 4-4.
When he heard that the president of FK Vojvodina was once the goalkeeper, the goalkeepers’ coach of the Brazilian national team wanted to shoot him several penalties, which the president Dragoljub Samardžić gladly accepted. Although, according to his own confession, he has not even stepped on the goal for 30 years, it could not be noticed, considering that the president of FK Vojvodina defended all three shots from 11 meters.
On behalf of the Brazilian Olympic football team, the team manager of this selection, Claudio Branco, sincerely thanked FK Vojvodina for their hospitality and for providing them with all the conditions for unhindered training at Karađorđe, expressing hope that they will have the opportunity to, as soon as possible, again visit, as he said, “beautiful Novi Sad and the great people he met in it”.
