What do organ donation and soccer (or football or fútbol) have in common? Typically, not much. However, one Brazilian soccer team, Sport Club do Recife, though otherwise. The BBC reports:
“Every Brazilian is born with football in the soul,” says Jorge Peixoto, of Sport Club Recife, one of the top teams in the north-east of the country.
For the last two years though, he has been more concerned about what happens to fans’ bodies when they die.
The club decided it “must look beyond the 11 players on the field and use its power for bigger things,” says Peixoto, the club’s vice-president for social programmes.
It asked them to become “immortal fans” donating their organs after they die so that their love for the club will live on in someone else’s body.
It’s nice that a soccer club in Brazil wants to give back. The question is, did it work?
The answer is yes. Over 65,000 people have signed up for an organ donor card. In fact, the organ transplant waiting list in Recife was reduced to zero within 1 year. In fact, mega-clubs PSG and FC Barcelona are interested in adopting a similar program.