Brazil is a long way away. So far away, it appears, that people there think the Taliban might be a fine symbol for a football club. To its credit the Fluminense Football Club, Brazil's current champions, have asked supporters to stop dressing up as Taliban members and posting photos online.
The fad began a week ago after the side, based in the Laranjeiras neighbourhood of Rio de Janeiro, lost an away match to a local Ecuadorean club. Some supporters then went online and urged others to "show their warrior spirit" by posing in Taliban-style attire.
To be sure, rowdy sports-club supporters in many countries have done far worse things. Nonetheless, the brutal, sinister Taliban should not be anyone's idea of a role model. Denouncing the dress-up campaign, Fluminense management noted in a statement on Saturday that the Taliban "are terrorists and not healthy warriors".
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle once wrote of a lost world, a land of prehistoric creatures that survives somewhere on the border of Brazil and Bolivia. Perhaps we've found it - at Fluminense's Maracana stadium? What other explanation could there be for people to be so out of touch with the times?
