Against the backdrop of a public health crisis that has cost more than two million people (and counting) their lives, football, or “soccer,” remains the world’s most popular spectator sport, and Brazilians lay claim to having perfected, if not invented, what locals call the “beautiful game.” It would be easy to dismiss professional footballers’ COVID-era involvement in the sport at its highest levels as the natural response of a group of people who have personally benefited from what has been, for them, a highly lucrative enterprise. At the same time, to reduce players’ impulse to play to a mercenary desire for profit is to underestimate the emotional dimensions of a sport whose appeal defies objective quantification. To that end, I am writing a book, titled Plus Minas: Profiles in Brazil’s Beautiful Game, that will unfold as a series of selected profiles of the players who now ply their footballing trades with Clube Atlético Mineiro, the most historic professional team in the Brazilian state of Minas Gerais. What my study addresses is why the forms of playfulness we associate with football have found expression amid the rising casualties of the pandemic, inside a country, Brazil, that ranks second only to the United States in terms of COVID-related fatalities.