A goal, a rush towards the fans and then, suddenly, the player disappears into the void. It’s the surreal scene that went viral during the Brazilian championship match between Coritiba and Chapecoense, played on August 8 at the Couto Pereira stadium in Curitiba. The protagonist of the misadventure is Jacy, a Coritiba player.
With the home team already ahead, Jacy headed the ball into the net and began celebrating what looked to be a 2-0 lead. Caught up in his enthusiasm, he picked up the ball, put it under his shirt and ran behind the goal to get closer to the Coritiba supporters.
What separated him from the curve, however, was not just the billboards. In fact, the access tunnel to the guests’ changing rooms opens immediately behind it. Jacy jumped the barrier without noticing the void and fell down the tunnel entrance, suddenly disappearing from the camera images. Companions and security personnel immediately rushed to his aid.
Jacy managed to get up and limped back onto the field. But while he was being helped, the second, decidedly less painful, mockery of the evening also arrived: the semi-automatic system for detecting offside signaled an irregular position in the action and the VAR led to the goal being disallowed. In short, all that celebration had been for a goal that would never have made it onto the scoreboard.
The player finished the first half and returned after the break, but the consequences of the fall were felt. A few minutes into the second half he requested a substitution due to pain in his right ankle and was replaced.
The most incredible part of the story is that something almost identical had already happened to Couto Pereira. In 2014, during Coritiba-São Paulo, the Cameroonian striker Joel scored and, running to celebrate behind the goal, passed the advertising boards and ended up in the same tunnel. Even then, the images of the footballer who suddenly disappeared from the scene went around the world.
Twelve years later Jacy practically replicated that scene, with one not insignificant difference: Joel’s goal was valid. Jacy’s, after a fall, scare and injury, wasn’t even included in the result of the match.