One of the great Australian football stories happened 19 years ago in January when a young Aussie coach called Ange Postecoglou took his NSL players from South Melbourne to Rio to face, amongst others, Manchester United in a huge FIFA tournament.
“The one thing I remember is going to the stadium for our first game. Traffic stopped and we realized it was the opposition fans from Vasco jumping up, hitting the windows, threatening us. I couldn’t believe what I saw.
“Running out on the ground was another highlight.

“We held our own against Vasco. We were very well coached and set up structured for the game. But technically and physically they were far superior. But we weren’t full time.
"Maybe A-League teams would’ve bridged that gap a bit.
“A couple of years later I trained with a Brazilian team for about five months. I realised then the physical preparedness and technical awareness.
“But for us, it kind of fell out of the blue sky into our laps. All of a sudden, go to Fiji and play a little Oceania tournament and you could be playing at Maracana Stadium against Manchester United.
"It was surreal.”
South trained at Fluminense’s ground. With 4000 fans able to be seated to watch, they had their own gym, tennis club, swimming pool.
“In Melbourne, we only used to train at night after work,” added Panopoulos. “I remember Ange went over for the draw and he came back saying, ‘You guys have got no idea what we’re getting into here.’
“I remember it was a corner against Vasco and my mate Steve Iosifidis and I we were in the box and I was making sure we were marking up and turned to Steve, ‘You got Edmundo?’ and he said “Yeah, you got Romario?’ because Romario was short.
“Just after the ball was cleared we kinda looked at each other as if to say, ‘Is this really happening?’. ‘Are we really saying this’. Surreal. We couldn't believe what we were saying.
“It was hard to come back to Australia...”
He did, but during the tournament, Panopoulos kept in touch with the girl he met out there.
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