Brazilian top-flight club wear name of English fan with MND on shirts

When the players of Brazilian team Coritiba walked out of the tunnel for their league match against Chapecoense on Saturday evening, their shirts looked a little different.

Rather than the usual front-of-shirt sponsor, the kits were adorned with the name of English fan Jonny Butcher, to raise awareness of motor neurone disease (MND).

The 29-year-old from Norwich was diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) - a form of MND - in February.

MND is an incurable condition that damages parts of the nervous system, destroying motor neurones (specialist nerve cells) in the brain and spinal cord, causing muscles to weaken, waste away and eventually stop working.

A Norwich City fan since childhood, Butcher took an interest in Brazilian Serie A club Coritiba for two reasons.

In March 2023 he met his wife and Coritiba native Ana Clara on a Christian dating app, and a few months later he visited her in Brazil and fell in love with the city.

By incredible coincidence, Norwich City and Coritiba formed a strategic partnership in 2022, so adopting the Brazilian club seemed natural.

The couple married in 2024, but in February Butcher's diagnosis turned their lives upside down.