Brad,
Nice and interesting the NYT found out and wrote about this. The existence of this tournament has been well known in Brazil lately, but for many years even here it was not known outside of Manaus, and it`s something unique of that city, unheard of anywhere else in the country. The funny thing is that Manaus, nor the entire State of Amazonas, has no professional teams playing in neither of both Brazil`s first and second division leagues, so people there cheer for teams from other states, mainly from São Paulo or Rio (like Palmeiras or Flamengo for example). When Manaus was chosen to be one of the World Cup`s host cities, with nonexistent professional teams, and a stadium had to be built, criticism abounded, arguing that there were no teams in the city and that the stadium would be a useless monument after the cup, and so many other state capitals in the country with thriving professional football teams and stadiums were left out. The argument the State Governor and the vast majority of its citizens used was exactly the "Peladão" tournament, what they called the "biggest amateur football tournament in the world", with the stadium being used as the main facility for these games in the future. So apparently from August on, the "Peladão" will be played in a FIFA class stadium, with a 40.000 people capacity. Believe it or not, filling it up won't be a problem though, since this kind of attendance is not unknown to many games in the tournament...
