by Alex Bellos
Nineteen-year-old Aldyr Garcia Schlee was working as an illustrator at the local paper in Pelotas, a town a hundred miles from the Uruguayan border. Since his job was drawing pictures for the sports pages, he was familiar with sketching footballers. He entered the competition for a laugh. 'I was really scandalised that they were demanding that the four colours of the national flag had to be used,' he remembers. 'Up to three colours is okay. But four colours is really difficult. No team uses four colours. And the four colours in the flag are colours that don't go well together. How can you put yellow and white together on a shirt – what you get is the national team colours of the Holy See!'
Aldyr and his wife, Marlene, have taken me to their favourite Pelotas restaurant. La Paisana serves Uruguayan parrillada, traditional cuisine grilled over a wood-fire. Old radios, tango posters and hanging propeller fans conjure images of old Montevideo. Parrillada differs from Brazilian barbecues in that Brazilians spit the meat over a coal-fire, and only cook the flesh. The Uruguayans eat the whole animal. For starters Aldyr orders himself morrón relleno con sesos, pepper stuffed with brains, and Marlene chooses riñón de oveja, lamb's kidneys.
Aldyr is now sixty-six years old. He looks at least a decade younger than he is. This is partly because his shoulder-length hair has not gone properly grey, and he brushes it back in a way that is uncharacteristically bohemian for a Brazilian living in the rural south. The strongest lines on his face are at the corners of his eyes; he laughs a lot, in a falsetto that is sometimes indistinguishable from tears.
He explains the process of elimination that went through his head. 'White and blue go together – blue with white detailing or vice versa. That was the shorts sorted. What colours are left? Yellow and green – which are the colours most used to denominate the nation anyway. When we tie ribbons in our hair they are yellow and green. So I thought – let's work with yellow and green.'
'I did more than a hundred designs. I did two sashes like an X. I did a V like [Argentinian club side] Velez Sarsfield. I came to the conclusion that the shirt had to be just yellow. With green it was incoherent. Yellow goes with blue and the socks could be white.'
He painted his version on a piece of paper and his cousin Adolfo sent it to Rio. He says there were three hundred other entrants from all over Brazil, including many professional graphic artists. Aldyr's uniform won – a yellow shirt with green collar and cuffs, blue shorts with a white vertical stripe, and white socks with green and yellow detail. His design was not strictly within the rules. His palette did not have the flag's correct sky-blue. His design used what he had – cobalt blue, a colour which, nevertheless, was faithfully recreated and remains in the uniform until today.
Alberto Lima, of the Judging Commission and the Brazilian Society of Fine Art, said Aldyr's colour distribution was the most 'harmonious'. In second place was Nei Damasceno, who had designed the 1950 World Cup poster. His suggestion was a green shirt, white shorts and yellow socks – 'terribly ugly', quips Aldyr. The thought of Brazil playing in green with yellow socks somehow kills the phrase 'beautiful game'.
As well as a cash prize, the Correio da Manhã offered the winner a year's internship as a designer. Aldyr moved to Rio de Janeiro. It should have been a dream time: a golden opportunity to launch a career and a chance to meet his footballing heroes. It was decided that he live with the national squad. He was given quarters in São Januário, where he shared a room with the players Paulinho de Almeida, Salvador, and, later, Dequinha. But the experience was traumatic. 'I was totally disillusioned. The players were a bunch of scoundrels. Only a few had integrity,' he adds.
The shy boy from the provinces was intimidated by the boozing, and the endless lines of women entering the players' rooms for sex. 'I was scared of women. It was a bad time for me'. As soon as he could he returned to his home state, Rio Grande do Sul, where he has lived ever since. Aldyr turned down invitations to design football shirts professionally. He has dabbled only twice since then, both for Pelotas teams. Grêmio Esportivo Brasil used his design for a couple of seasons. The shirt he made for Grêmio Atlético Farroupilha – half red, half green, with a yellow vertical stripe – would not have won any design competition. The team wore it once, lost 4-0, and never wore it again.
Brazil first played in their new strip at the Maracanã on 14 March 1954, a 1-0 victory against Chile. It was only eight years later that Brazil first won the World Cup in yellow. In the 1958 World Cup final, the team faced Sweden, who also have yellow shirts. Having no other kit prepared, Brazil cut off the national emblem from its yellow tops and sewed them on to blue shirts bought at the last minute in Stockholm city centre.
Aldyr's yellow shirts have been so successful that they are possibly the world's most recognisable sporting uniform. One can hardly imagine Brazilian football without them. They are intrinsic to the team's glamour and magic. Yellow is such a strong primary colour that it perfectly synthesised with the flamboyant, flash Brazilian style. More than that, golden yellow adds a warmth and luxuriousness that complements prodigal Brazilian skills. The team colour is so evocative, visually unmistakable and iconic it is almost as if the footballers are personifications of golden statuettes. Aldyr thinks that the yellow gives Brazil 'a touch of the exotic, like something you would expect from Africa'. For Europe, Brazil is exotic enough.
The colour's power also comes from the fact that Brazil is the only major footballing country that uses it. Golden yellow identifies Brazil – around the world and at home. The national football strip, in fact, is a more prevailing symbol than the national flag. The flag – made up of a circle, a diamond and a rectangle concentrically superimposed-was designed for the birth of the republic in 1889. The green represents the forests, the yellow the country's riches, the blue globe with white stars the Rio sky at night. But the flag has the positivist (and embarrassingly outdated) motto 'Order and Progress', and is also tainted by military connotations. When a Brazilian wants to cheer a fellow countryman in another sport he will wear the yellow shirt-because football gives Brazilians a feeling of national identity – citizenship, even – much more than anything else.
Aldyr says it was initially gratifying to see the team run out wearing his creation. He lost interest shortly afterwards, partly because of his bad experiences in Rio. 'When I was younger I owned a shirt that was used by Pelé,' he says. 'But we were burgled and so I didn't have one for a long time. A few years ago I was given a shirt as a present. But the truth is that it was never that important. I never was very proud of it.'
For a man whose best-known work is the strongest symbol of Brazilian identity, it comes as a surprise to learn that Aldyr supports Uruguay. In fact, I should have guessed by his choice of restaurant. His allegiance could not be clearer if he rode a horse around Pelotas in sky-blue jodhpurs singing the national anthem. At his home, a few miles out of Pelotas, a metal plaque with the word Uruguay is visible as soon as you walk in the front door. For good measure he has stuck a Uruguayan flag on the side of his car. Not only is the man responsible for the international image of Brazil unpatriotic, but he shares sympathies with Uruguay: the country that caused the need for his design in the first place.
The following day Aldyr and I drive to Jaguarão, the town on the Brazil-Uruguay border where he was born. The ride takes us two hours. The landscape is flat and green. Cattle shade themselves from the sun, sitting under pockets of eucalyptus trees. It starts to rain heavily so we stop at the only town en route, Arroio Grande. When we leave, an hour later, the streets are a foot deep in water.
On the way Aldyr tells me more about his life. He has been a designer, a journalist, a university professor and is now a novelist. He also wins competitions. He has won the Esso Prize, the Brazilian equivalent of the Pulitzer for journalism, for an investigation into the country's oil resources. His first book, a collection of short stories called Contos de Sempre, or Eternal Tales, won the first Bienal of Brazilian Literature in 1982. His second book, Uma Terra Só, or Just One Land, won the sec
ond Bienal in 1984.
Aldyr's fiction is based on the clash between personal and national identity, exemplified by his own divided loyalties between Uruguay and Brazil. He was born and brought up in a frontier town and has never completely resolved to which side he belongs. He is a Brazilian author, yet he writes in Spanish. His books are published first in Uruguay, where they sell well, and then in Brazil, where he is barely known. His literary universe is the border between the two countries – an essentially artificial line drawn through the homogenous landscape of the pampas. Unlike many authors from the south of Brazil, who are concerned with creating a regional type, the gaucho cowboy, Aldyr writes about the contradictions inherent in living on a frontier. 'My writing is about the other side. It's an attempt to overcome the dividing line,' he says. Even his name passes frontiers – it spans three countries: Brazil, Spain and Germany.
We arrive in Jaguarão. The town is made up of well-preserved squares and cobbled streets. It is clean and happily provincial. We arrive and cross over the Mauá International Bridge to Rio Branco, the town on the Uruguayan side. Aldyr enjoys reminiscing. Even though he was brought up in Jaguarão, he was moulded by Uruguayan culture. The first football team he supported was Nacional of Montevideo. 'As a child we depended almost exclusively on Uruguay. Jaguarão is closer to Pelotas than Montevideo, but Pelotas didn't have the same resources. We were under Uruguayan control.' A small store has half a roast pig on the counter. Aldyr enjoys showing how barbaric Uruguayans are, although it is an ironic way of praising how much more civilised the country is than Brazil. Uruguayans, not Brazilians, read his books.
The Mauá International Bridge, an elegant stone structure with four turrets at each side, is the defining architectural feature of both towns. Riverboat boss Augusto Schlee transported the cement and steel used in its construction. Three years after its inauguration, in 1931, Augusto's son Aldyr was born. The bridge is at the heart of Aldyr's fiction. It symbolises both the joining of Brazil and Uruguay and their separation. As a young child he made a giant model of the bridge. At his home he has a picture of it on the wall.
We return to Jaguarão and sit in a café in the main square. The sun is low and the buildings glow. Like all Brazilians of his generation, Aldyr has not forgotten about the 1950 World Cup – but for different reasons. He is one of the few Brazilians who believes that Uruguay were worthy world champions. 'The Uruguayan team was fundamentally made up of players from [Montevideo's] Peñarol in 1949, which was an extraordinary team. It was a goal machine. There is no register of any other team which has scored so many goals in one championship. An average of 4.5 goals a game. It was a team that was always destroying opponents. Not even Pelé's Santos did that.
'I am certain today that Uruguay had a team which was better equipped and better organised than Brazil. Even with the disadvantage of not being able to draw and being 1-0 down I believe they had more guts.'
Uruguay used to be a Brazilian province before it fought for independence. It has a population of 3.2 million, a third of the population of Rio Grande do Sul, the Brazilian state to its north. At current rates, there are fifty Brazilians for every Uruguayan. For Aldyr, the Uruguayan victory in 1950 was upsetting but it also reinforced an admiration for the tiny country across the river from home.
In 1995 Aldyr published the collection Cuentos de Fútbol, Football Tales. (True to form, it was a finalist in the Jabuti Prize, Brazil's version of the Booker). One story is a fantasy of how he used to play football with Ghiggia and Miguez. While the two Uruguayans join Peñarol and then the national side, Aldyr returns to Jaguarão. A few years later Aldyr met Ghiggia and read him the tale.
'That can't be true?' remarked the footballer. We both chuckle.
On the day of the Fateful Final Aldyr, then aged fifteen, was on Uruguayan soil. He had popped over the Mauá bridge to go to the cinema. During one of the matinees the projection stopped, the lights went on and a serious voice said in Spanish: 'Attention. Cine Rio Branco has the pleasure to inform you that the Uruguayans are the world champions.' The audience stood up and sung the national anthem.
The first story in Football Tales is about that moment. In order to resolve his conflicting loyalties, the story uses two narratives: of a boy watching the film in the Cine Rio Branco and of a boy watching the match in the Maracanã. The boy in the cinema walks home in silence, hands in his pockets, kicking stones along the bridge. The boy in the stadium writes:
I was crying without knowing why. Crying of emotion, that was obvious: but of a pure emotion that was neither happiness nor sadness, that was neither certainty nor doubt, but that was the whole lot . . . perhaps because I won, perhaps because I lost; I was crying for the innocent magic of that cold afternoon, of that hot afternoon, of that impossible afternoon.
It is a singularly peculiar stroke of fate that a young man already torn between both sides was, in creating the yellow shirt, so explicity involved in the game's aftermath. It is even odder that that same person then became a successful novelist focussing on the relationship between the two sides. Aldyr dismisses winning the shirt competition as an 'accident' and irrelevant in the greater scheme of his life. But in certain ways it still haunts him. 'I like everything about Uruguay,' he says. 'Maybe I say this just to justify myself.' Aldyr's family believes his obsession with Uruguay is irrationally contraire.
Like the Maracanã, the Centenario Stadium in Montevideo was built to host a World Cup. It was the stage for the first tournament, in 1930, which was also won by Uruguay. The stadium was also the largest in the world at the time. My first thought is how much the world changed between 1930 and 1950.1 am struck by how small and quaint the Centenario Stadium is. It is set comfortably within a park, compared to the immense concrete, urban Maracanã. It reinforces a sense that Uruguay stole Brazil's World Cup. Uruguay, a smaller and quainter country, already has a monument to its footballing triumph. It did not need another one.
Outside the stadium there is a triangle of grass about half the size of a tennis court, which has the sign: '1950 Maracanã Champions Free Space'. It is not well-tended enough to discourage people to walk through it. Which they do. The memorial garden is a well-trodden shortcut between tarmac walkways.
I have come with Aldyr, Marlene and his cousin Adolfo to watch Uruguay vs. Brazil. Marlene had wanted to wear a yellow Brazil top but she could not find the one they have at home. 'That's how much I care about it,' says Aldyr. Marlene, annoyed at her husband's anti-Brazilianness, jokes: 'I wouldn't have worn it anyway. People would accuse me of advertising his product!'
We sit with the Brazilian fans. Aldyr is discreet. He has a Uruguayan badge in the inside lapel of his jacket and a flag he printed from the internet in his pocket. During the Brazilian national anthem he keeps still and emotionless. He turns ashen-faced during the Uruguayan anthem. Tears drip down the side of his nose. 'It gets to me always. Partly because it reminds me of my childhood but also out of respect, because here I have been accepted as a Uruguayan author.'
Opposite us, the home fans roll out a banner. They pass it above their heads until it covers the upper section of the terraces. The banner has only one thing written on it: '1950'. It seems less a statement of pride than a provocation to the country to whom it still matters.
When the Brazilians run out I ask Aldyr what he feels when he sees the national team wearing his shirt. 'Nothing,' he replies straightaway. 'In fact, I feel guilty. The shirt has been hijacked by the CBF [Brazilian Football Confederation], who sold it to Nike. The shirt is not a symbol of Brazilian citizenship. It is a symbol of corruption and the status quo.' He pauses. 'If the CBF had a different attitude, one which didn't involve stealing, then I would be really happy. I wouldn't feel guilty at all.'
Uruguay win 1-0. Aldyr leaves the stadium to take the overnight bus home. He cannot hide a smile.
The next morning I take a taxi to Las Piedras, a small town ten miles from Montevideo. The drive passes through a rundown industrial area and flat, green countrysid
e. On the outskirts of Las Piedras, we turn left at a McDonalds. A few houses down I knock on a cottage door that I have been told is Alcides Ghiggia's address.
A woman answers. She directs me to an alleyway at the side of the house. I follow it. A stairway leads to the flat roof of the building behind. On the roof is a small brick box-home. Even for Las Piedras' modest standards, it is particularly poor. I knock but there is no reply. The neighbour suggests I check out the town market, where Beatriz, his girlfriend, runs a stall.
I recognise Ghiggia instantly. The man who scored the most famous goal in Brazilian football is standing behind a table of shirts and jumpers, wrapped up warmly in a sports jacket. His thick black hair is brushed back. He has a small trimmed moustache, just like he did in 1950. The large nose, bent at the bridge, that gave him the childhood nickname 'No-nose' has flattened with age. His sharp blue-grey eyes catch mine. I introduce myself. Did he see yesterday's Uruguay game, I ask. He did. At home with Beatriz. He has not been to the Centenario Stadium for eight years.
Ghiggia first says he does not want to speak about 1950. He has spent his life talking about it. We chat by the stall for a few minutes. As we walk to a café I enquire about Beatriz's age. 'She's twenty-eight. I'm seventy-four,' he replies, proudly.
Before I met Ghiggia I had been warned that not only does he charge for interviews, but that he only accepts payment in cash dollars. I had also been told that of all the surviving 1950 veterans he is the poorest and most bitter. Yet he does not ask me for money. He answers all my questions. He says he feels neglected by Uruguay, but he says so with good-humoured resignation. 'It's like that for old footballers all over the world.' I do not detect any anger. Once he opens up I feel he enjoys talking about his life.