FIFA names Brazilian mother Silvia Grecco 2019 Best Fan after narrating Palmeiras matches to blind son

From the stands at Allianz Parque to The Best FIFA Football Awards

A football stadium is loud, fast and mostly visual. Play shifts across the pitch in seconds and fans follow it with their eyes while the crowd’s reaction builds around them. For a blind fan, the stadium experience can be little more than a cacophony of shouting and cheering that bears no obvious relation to the action on the pitch.

Brazilian mother Silvia Grecco found a way to fill that gap for her son Nickollas. What began as a private habit between mother and son at Palmeiras matches in São Paulo eventually travelled the world and won her an award from FIFA.

How the narration started

Silvia Grecco took her son Nickollas to Palmeiras matches and described the game as it unfolded, from individual players’ movements to the mood in the stands. According to FIFA, the tradition started when Nickollas, after a few visits to the stadium, took off his radio headset and listened to the fans chanting without knowing what was happening around him.

Silvia began describing the action to him and said she tried to convey the emotion of a mother as well as a fan.

Nickollas’s story

According to FIFA, Nickollas was born five months early, weighing about half a kilogram. Complications during birth meant his retina did not develop, leaving him blind. He was also diagnosed with mild autism. Aleteia reported that twelve other couples waiting to adopt had passed him over before Silvia adopted him and it gave his age as eleven when it published its report in September 2019.

Viral recognition and the FIFA Fan Award

FIFA featured Silvia and Nickollas as the first story in its six-part Sheroes series and nominated her for the Fan Award. Football fans from around the world voted for Silvia and her story won the award with 58.36 per cent of the vote, according to Reuters.

The award was handed out at The Best FIFA Football Awards held at Teatro alla Scala, Milan, on 23 September 2019. Nickollas accompanied her to the event.

Silvia said she had felt invisible for many years, but that things had changed since the Sheroes video was published, because people now know that disabled people exist and that sport can change their lives.

CNN Chile reported that Palmeiras invited them to a training session, where coach Luiz Felipe Scolari introduced Nickollas to the players. Her narration let one blind fan follow the match from the stands and the attention it drew has highlighted people who are often left on the margins of sport.

Context on inclusion

A systematic review titled Influence of Physical Activity and Sport on the Inclusion of People with Visual Impairment, published in the International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health on 31 December 2021, examined what shared sport can do socially. In their conclusion, the authors found that sport programmes help improve attitudes towards people with disabilities and increase social skills. The review also found that visually impaired people tend to feel excluded at some point while taking part in sport and that blind people tend to be less physically active than their sighted counterparts, with accessibility often a key issue.