Porto Alegre

The story of Rafael Dias Belloli, universally known as Rafinha, stands as one of the most inspiring testaments to sheer willpower in professional sports.

Long before he was pulling the strings for FC Barcelona or wearing the captain's armband at Camp Nou, Rafinha's early life was anchored in Restinga, a distant and economically disadvantaged favela in Porto Alegre, Brazil.

While many of his compatriots were absorbed into prestigious local youth setups at a tender age, Rafinha encountered a harsh reality.

Both of Porto Alegre's historic giants, Internacional and Grimio, repeatedly turned him away.

Judged as too slight, physically underpowered, and lacking the conventional physical metrics demanded by scouts, he was told he did not fit the profile of a professional footballer.

The constant rejections pushed him to the brink of walking away from the sport altogether during his mid-teens.

En un medio campo muy competitivo.

Oportunidad para Lira de tomar ese rol, como en su momento, recordarás en sus partidos, Beto, se tuvieron contra el River, se tuvieron contra el Inter en Porto Alegre para la ciudad de Argentina y le ayudó mucho precisamente el caso de Oved.

El caso de Oved, tengo ganas de verlo más desde hace mucho tiempo.

Claro.

good

excellent man and one day we should do a podcast episode in portuguese i've i've done one podcast episode in portuguese and with a with a fan of palmeiras so that was an interesting experience for me and i would like to repeat it but but today it's all about uh you and your team isn't it and i want to find out what it's like being a a fan of Internacional de Porto Alegre.

What's it like living in Porto Alegre? So, first of all, tell me, man, whereabouts is Porto Alegre? I think I know where it is.

Is it the southeast of Brazil, right?

Right.

So, Porto Alegre is the capital city of the southernmost state in Brazil, which is called Rio Grande do Sul.

We are down below the map.

If you see Uruguay, we are the state right next to it.

Michael Graves met this head-on in Brazil.

Well, I was informed that the Brazilian shows were cancelled because there was a local politician from Porto Alegre that had mobilized local Antifa groups and other leftist organizations to threaten and carry out direct actions against myself, against the venues that were holding, that were going to host these shows here in Brazil.

And they began... threatening the hotels and out of fear of safety for not only the employees of the venues and the hotels, myself, my team,

So my Oma was diagnosed with stomach cancer in February of this past year of 2026.

The famous case study is from Brazil in the 1980s, and they implemented it.

as an experiment in Porto Alegre in Brazil in 1989, and they are still running their budget like this in that state.

There are other examples in Chicago and Warsaw that have similarly been deemed successful.

So I think we should probably give the citizens of Bordeaux a year or two to see how this runs and withhold judgment.