gossipify logo 1

Footvolley world champion Eduardo Papel is a point of reference for sport in the USA

Four-time world champion in footvolleyball, Eduardo Papel, originally from Rio, is now making history on American soil. One of the biggest names in the sport in Brazil, the 42-year-old carioca leads the league table in the National Footvolley League (NFA), the sport’s premier league in the United States. And, at the end of March of this year, he held his first tournament of the modality: the Papel Footvolley Cup, in Orlando, Florida.

95 men and women athletes took part in the event. It is one of the largest ever held on US soil, with a prize pool of US$2,600 across all categories. Therefore, its first step is to professionalize the competition. And do it more often in the US and take it to other countries as well.




In Brazil, Papel collects titles. In addition to the four world championships, he is a six-time winner of the Brazilian championship and 12-time champion of Rio de Janeiro, some of these achievements with the Vasco shirt. Incidentally, in 2022 he was the only athlete to reach the podium in all phases of the National Footvolley League and finished the year as MVP.

“I’ve been competing in the United States since 2011. But in Orlando, where we live, the sport didn’t have many practitioners or a strong training culture. Until recently, we didn’t have private sand courts and high-level leagues.” training yes. But here it is also very common to have sand courts in public parks, so it has facilitated the entry of sport into the city – says Paper”.

Eduardo Papel designs the future

Today, in addition to participating in competitions, Papel is planning the future. He wants to train the new generations, run clinics and organize tutoring. For him, footvolley is above all a tool that teaches values ​​such as respect, discipline, teamwork, team spirit and resilience.

“I have always seen sport as a form of social transformation. When I lived in Brazil, I often tried to pass on these values ​​to the children of the poor community where I grew up in Rocinha. a living example that sport is a means of social transformation”.

Papel recalls some memorable races in his career. One of them with the Brazilian national team 4 x 4, in 2012. He was one of the first footvolley players to defend a “shark attack” with another “shark attack”, a move of great difficulty and a lot of skill in the sport. He is considered one of the best defenders of shark attacks to date.

In 2019, in the final of the Brazilian Footvolley League, defending Vasco, alongside Guigui, he won the title in what is considered one of the most exciting decisions of the competition to date. After all, Papel and Guigui were defeated in the first set by Santos Belo and Vinícius, losing the second with three points difference and getting the reaction in the final stretch. But in the third and decisive set they restarted in the final stretch to overturn the set and win 2 to 1 (16-18, 18-16, 17-15), celebrating the national title. The League is the main competition in the country, bringing together several football shirt clubs (Botafogo, Santos, Grêmio, Internacional, São Paulo, Fluminense, among others), in addition to having already counted on the presence of famous players such as Romário and Ronaldinho Gaucho .

international highlight

Eduardo Papel switched from beach soccer to foot volleyball at the age of 16. At the age of 20 he became a professional athlete for Vasco. Naturally, he joined the Brazilian footvolley team, winning several titles in Brazil and in different cities around the world.

The athlete’s greatest success in this sport was, according to Papel himself, seeing Renan and Felipe, two children who got to know footvolley thanks to him, grow up and become world champions. Today I am a point of reference for the other children, just as he was one day for them.

Follow Jogada10 on social media: Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

Source: Terra

You may also like

Hot News

TRENDING NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Join our community of like-minded individuals and never miss out on important news and updates again.

follow us