READING ACTIVITY

Throughout this, people kept mentioning Bruno, too. Fred, yeah he’s good. But Bruno is a
lovely guy. Bruno’s a hero. Bruno used to drink in this bar. Ask anyone. Great goalkeeper.
Played for Atlético Mineiro here in the city. Barcelona were after him for while.
In fact good old local Bruno might have had a decent shout to be Brazil’s No1 goalie at his
home World Cup, had his career not been cruelly derailed, not by injury or poor form, but
by his imprisonment over the murder and dismembering of the mother of his only child,
whose body was then fed to his pet rottweilers.
The ballad of Bruno, and more to the point his victim Eliza Samudio, is a genuinely
horrendous story. In 2013 Bruno was convicted of ordering the murder of Eliza, a former
model he met at a party, who may have also dated Cristiano Ronaldo. Eliza became
pregnant with Bruno’s child. She had the baby and eventually sought financial support from
Bruno, who was at the time being linked with a big-money move to Milan.
At which point Bruno and assorted friends conspired to have her tortured and murdered in
a shed in suburban Belo Horizonte. Bruno was arrested after a tip-off from a teenage
cousin. “In the future, I’ll be able to laugh at this,” Bruno scoffed as he entered the
courtroom, but he later confessed to his part in her killing and was sentenced to 22 years in
prison.
Amazingly, though, his story is far from over. The breaking news is that Bruno is now out,
freed from prison with 15 years still to serve while an appeal is mustered up by his lawyers.
A video has appeared of Bruno celebrating with family and friends on the outside, doing
thumbs-up to the cameras and, as predicted, laughing about all this.
Meanwhile it gets odder still. Murdering Bruno, who as things stand is guilty of ordering a
woman’s murder and feeding her to his dogs, wants to play football again. And soon. He’s
still only 32, in his prime for a goalkeeper. He’s been training in prison. But wait. There’s a
problem with Murdering Bruno returning to football. No, not mass protests, a life ban and
questions in parliament. The problem is he’s not quite match fit. Just give it a few weeks,
his agent says. He’s back, baby. Murdering Bruno is back.
In fact, several Brazilian clubs have already been in touch trying to secure his signature.
And why not? He’s a good goalkeeper. Brazil don’t really have a settled No1 right now. Who
knows we might even see Murdering Bruno at Wembley, ruffling the mascot’s hair, shaking
Trevor Brooking’s hand, staring with cold, flat, glazed eyes out of your TV screen while he
mouths the national anthem.
What are we supposed to make of all this? Even football’s slightly wonky register of values
seems to have lost all sense of scale here. Some might say such oddity doesn’t exist in a
vacuum, that to condemn Brazilian football as morally suspect is to condemn also the
gathering cloud of interests and agents and sharks and trading partners that surround it
and pick away at its bones. That’s probably an argument for another, less mind-bogglingly
weird stage. For now it seems baffling that while his appeal is in train, Bruno should be out
there playing football, apparently without resistance.

→ Can you tell the story using your own words?

→ How does the author feel about what happened?
→How do you feel about it?

VIDEO ACTIVITY

→Who’s the defendant in the case?

→How do people react? Why?
→What do you know about what happened?
→How different would it have been had it happened in Brazil?

Text adapted from The Guardian

Bel Chavantes/ March 2017