Jacy Maranhao's Goal Celebration Gone Wrong

For a few wild seconds at the Couto Pereira, Jacy Maranhao wasn’t just a defender who had scored. He was gone.

The Coritiba captain had just done what centre-backs dream about and rarely experience: he found the net in a top-flight game against Chapecoense on Saturday in the 2026 Brasileirao. Adrenaline took over. He sprinted toward the stands, hurdled the advertising boards with the swagger of a man who plans to soak up the roar of the crowd – and vanished straight into the access tunnel.

One leap. One misstep. And suddenly the goalscorer was out of sight, swallowed by the stadium.

The video went viral within hours. It shows Jacy clearing the barrier, then dropping out of frame down the opening that leads to the stairs and tunnel for the locker rooms. A heartbeat later, he reappears, hauling himself back up, stumbling, grimacing, then trying to pick up the celebration where he left off as bewildered teammates rush over.

The punchline came quickly. VAR ruled the goal offside.

A defender’s rare moment of glory, wiped out by technology and undercut by a fall that looked like something from a slapstick reel rather than a professional league match.

Jacy, who was substituted in the second half due to pain, watched from the sidelines as Coritiba still found a way to finish the job, beating Chapecoense 2–1. The three points stayed in Curitiba; the meme went global.

After the match, the 30-year-old captain cut through the embarrassment with a dose of honesty. He admitted he had simply been “carried away” – understandable for a player whose job is usually to prevent goals, not celebrate them. “Defenders don’t score many goals,” he said, explaining the rush that had pushed him beyond the perimeter and into thin air.

There was a more personal motive, too. In an interview with local media, Jacy revealed he had wanted to celebrate with his pregnant wife in the stands. In the chaos of the moment, he misjudged his route. The access to the underground tunnel sits just beyond the advertising boards – and he’d forgotten it was on that side.

“When I jumped,” he recalled, “you know that feeling when you dream you’re falling from a building? That’s what it was like.”

The detail that turned a freak fall into a genuine scare: the tunnel entrance is normally shut during play and only opened at the end of each half. This incident unfolded just before halftime, when the area had already been opened to allow access. One slightly different timing, and Jacy might have landed on solid ground instead of disappearing into a void.

He paid for it on the pitch. During the second half he could no longer put proper weight on his foot and had to come off. On Monday, though, he moved to calm fears.

“At first it was more of a scare than anything else. During the match my foot was quite painful and I couldn’t really put weight on it, but today I’m feeling much better and recovering well,” he wrote on social media.

Relief for Coritiba, relief for their captain – and perhaps a quiet word with stadium staff and matchday operations.

The Couto Pereira, remarkably, has seen this movie before. In 2014, Cameroonian striker Joel Tagueu suffered a similar fate, tumbling into the same tunnel while celebrating a goal for Coritiba. Different year, different player, same trapdoor.

Two falls, twelve years apart, both born from the same thing: the pure, unfiltered joy of scoring. The kind that makes professionals forget the lines, the boards, the gaps, and even gravity itself.