What’s going on here then?

Good morning sports fans, Brazilian football fanatics, lovers of life, friends of Brian, football pundits and appreciators of a good blog. Welcome to the first post in a new chapter of the Brazilfooty blog, which is undergoing a makeover.

Going forward I am going to use this site as a platform for sharing thoughts and opinions on life in general, while continuing to publish updates and thoughts on Brazilian football. Basically, this is becoming the blogging equivalent of one of those hipster coffee shops where you can get coffee and your bike fixed at the same time. How cool is that?

For those who visited Brazilfooty purely for its Brazilian football content and have no interested in my views on anything else, then I can only apologise. What I can say though is that there will continue to be Brazilian football content on here and hopefully the occasional thought about something else might be of interest too.

Why am I doing this? First, I feel like there are things worth discussing with the world other than Brazilian football. Second, these conversations can’t always be done face to face, and since I’m fed up with Big tech and Facebook, I’m trying to find a new way to do this online. Third, given my life situation these days – living in London and not living in Brazil – thoughts on things not related to Brazilian football tend to fill my mind. Fourth, I’ve come to terms with it being okay to be a professional economist, punter and someone who likes Brazilian football, so I’m merging my online profiles into one.

All of that said, and while I think that I have things worth sharing with the world, I’d like this to be a platform for sharing ideas and thoughts, not just a way for me to promote my own views. So if you have something to say on any posts, please leave a comment at the bottom of the post – that will make me happy. Hopefully that fairly easy to do.

For those that aren’t on my personal mailing list and want to follow the blog, insert your email address in the box at the bottom left of this page to get an alert every time a new post is published. You can also follow me on Twitter at @brazilfooty (I’ll be tweeting about Brazilian football, trolling people and doing others stuff from that handle). I will ditch my previous personal twitter handle which I never used anyway.

For those who don’t know me, I am the bloke in the picture at the top of this post, the founder of this blog and writer of most (but not all) articles on here. What can I say? I’m a professional economist during the day, punter by night. I live in London. I’m a Dad, a husband. I used to live in Brazil. I like football, pubs, surfing, nature, good stories – especially travel stories – Italian food. I love the characters in this world. More of that please. I’ve lived in a few different places and spend time thinking about stuff, including time itself, work-life balance issues, mindfulness and how to manage at least ten keepie uppies.

My personal thoughts might occasionally overlap with my work thoughts. But of course, anything I post on this site reflects my personal views and opinions and not those of my employer. And while I always try to give things proper and due consideration, especially at work, anything I write on this website may be complete rubbish, not reflect my actual views at all and should be ignored, especially if it causes any controversy.

In case you were wondering why I have a blog about Brazilian football in the first place, I’ll end off by saying why Brazilian football is important to me and this world: 1/ I’ve loved football since I can remember; 2/ I was inspired by some of the great Brazilian players and Seleção teams of the past – they always seemed to do things with style, flair, skill and excellence, which are good qualities to have when you do anything in life; 3/ Brazil is a country where people do things with the heart (ok not everyone, but many), something I think we should always do when doing things, especially when we want to do them well; 4/ it is a beautiful country, an important country and we should all know a little more about it; 5/ I lived there, speak the language and like to think that I can say something interesting about it; 6/ if you want to keep an eye on the best up and coming talent in world football, keep an eye on Brazil; 7/ the country is full of characters, which the world needs more of.

And on that note I welcome you to the new Brazilfooty, thank you for reading and sign off for now. You’ll be hearing more in the coming weeks. If you like what you’ve read today and/or have something to share, leave a comment below, sign up for email alerts below, follow on Twitter or get in touch (admin@brazilfooty.com).