by Alex Bellos
He says he most definitely is. 'Brazilian culture – this mix of races, this form of seeing the world and life – is possibly our greatest natural resource. Because it is a very happy culture, it is not discriminatory, it's free . . . it's a big disaster zone, really, but it is the essence of humanity. When humanity organised itself too much it lost its most basic characteristics, its instincts, its pleasures. I think this is what we have which is best, and that's why I'm absolutely in love with Brazil.'
Despite all its problems?
'We're a new, young nation, man. You've already had centuries of history. The Old World has had fifty years of stability. We are just being born.'
POSTSCRIPT
Brazilians stopped calling the World Cup by its name a long time ago. They refer to it by number. The 1970 victory is known as the 'Tri', because it was the third time they won it. In 1994 Romario & Co won the 'Tetra'. Romario, correspondingly, is not known as a world champion, but as a 'Tetra-champion'. In 1998 and in 2002, therefore, Brazilians were looking to win the 'Penta'. It was if they were not even after the same prize as the rest of us. The World Cup is almost a private competition, a personal challenge. And the terminology means that they never let go of the past. Each World Cup contains in its very title a reminder of former victories.
In 2002, for the first time since 1958, Brazil started a World Cup as outsiders. Since defeat seemed inevitable, there were those who even began to hope that it came quickly. Even the most enthusiastic fans could not disguise a trepidation and gloom. In Rio, there was a noticeable absence of the festive football murals and yellow-and-green bunting that I had seen in 1998. Nothing in the preparations seemed to be going right. During one of the last training kickabouts, Emerson, the captain, was put in goal and fell on his arm, causing an injury that would keep him out of the whole tournament.
Yet Brazil were dealt a lucky hand. They had been picked in the easiest group, together with Turkey, China and Costa Rica. By the time Brazil had beaten all three, favourites France, Argentina and Portugal were out of the competition and coach Luiz Felipe Scolari's men were gelling like a proper team. In the second phase, Italy and Spain went out, thanks to dubious refereeing decisions. As did Belgium, who had an apparently valid goal disallowed – against Brazil. After that game Brazil looked like winners. They beat England in the quarter-finals, which made them clear favourites. Brazil dispatched Turkey (again) in the semis and then Germany were seen off 2-0 in the final. Penta-champions at last.
Brazil were deserved winners in Korea and Japan. They won every game. They scored most goals. They played the most attractive football. They were – for all Scolari's famed negativity – creative and carefree. In retrospect, the victory consecrated a new golden age. The team will be remembered as the Brazil of the three Rs – the attacking triumvirate of Ronaldo, Rivaldo and Ronaldinho. And of Felipao, or Big Phil, the nickname that best summed up Scolari's paternalistic and coarse nature. He managed to let the three Rs play to the best of their potential. Never before had a national side's personality been so moulded in the coach's image. The press had dubbed the team the Scolari Family and its triumph was his greatest vindication.
The superstitious pointed out that not a drop of rain fell during any of Brazil's games, proof of divine intervention, since a downpour started minutes after the final against Germany. Of all Brazil's good fortune, the most important and resonant was the return of Ronaldo. It was the triumphant third act in an epic personal drama that, were it fiction, would be dismissed as far-fetched. Four years before he was the best player in the world, a youngster playing his first World Cup final, with the greatest prize in football within his grasp. Yet we all know what happened. The match marked the beginning of a very public plunge, from which many experts doubted he would ever return. He went through the purgatory of two serious knee injuries and the possibility that he would never play again.
He came good just in time. Felipao kept his faith in Ronaldo and chose him in every game even though he was not fully match fit, and in the weeks running up to the World Cup was hardly being called up by his club side, Internazionale. Ronaldo proved all his doubters wrong. Not only did Brazil win the title, but Ronaldo won the Golden Boot for highest scorer and equalled Pelé's record for goals scored in World Cups. In the most prestigious game – the final – he scored both goals. Not even Roy of the Rovers did that. 'Ronaldo copied the classic journey of the mythological hero who descends into hell and then comes back to change history. He came back from the abyss to rewrite the 1998 Cup final in France. He is the first mortal who has been able to go back in time to rectify his own biography,' wrote Luis Fernando Verissimo in O Globo.
Ronaldo got the headlines, but for me the quiet hero of the World Cup was Cafu. When Emerson pulled out with injury, Cafu, the right wingback, was made captain. He became the first and only player to play in three consecutive World Cup finals. Cafu is known for his good nature and simple humility. Almost as soon as he had won the World Cup, he asked a colleague to write his home neighbourhood 'Jardim Irene' on his shirt. His name is short for Cafuringa, a nickname he got early in his career for looking like another player with the same name. Yet the press noted that it sounds as if it ought to be an abbreviation of 'cafuzo', which is the term given to the mixed race descendants of blacks and Indians. When Cafu stood on the podium with the Cup in the air, his home scribbled on his shirt, he seemed to be a perfect representation of the Brazilian people.
Why were the pundits so wrong about Brazil in 2002? With hindsight, the humiliating qualification period of the previous two years was just a bad patch – not the beginning of Brazilian football's terminal decline. After a year in which they seemed to lose their confidence and their hunger, Brazil rose to the occasion when it mattered. Brazil has produced many of the sport's most talented individuals and it looks likely that this will continue. But the national team is in danger of gaining a split personality – brilliant at World Cups and underachievers between them. World-beaters incapable of performing to a high standard in less important matches. With five World Cup titles behind them – two more than anyone else – this dichotomy seems likely to get more extreme. Brazil has as much chance of not qualifying for the 2006 World Cup as it has of winning it – and each is highly possible.
The disorganisation of Brazilian football is as endemic as the on-pitch successes. After the flight home from Japan, the squad arrived in the morning in Brasilia to meet the president and parade through the streets. Most of the players then flew to Rio, where they paraded on the top of a lorry for five hours. At 2 a.m. – after sixty hours with no sleep – the cortege turned back to the airport, even though they hadn't reached their scheduled destination of Copacabana beach. Fans started to pelt the squad bus with stones and smashed its windows.
The victory caused much self-reflection, and somehow highlighted the country's shortcomings in other areas. 'Why don't we have, as a country, half the success that we do in football?' wrote one newspaper a few days later. Yet the need for football victories somehow propels the country forward. After the final whistle at Yokohama – and before even Cafu held up the trophy – the Brazilian TV commentator exclaimed, in breathless euphoria, that the country had just arrived in the age of the Hexa.
Appendix One
NOTES ON CHAPTERS
Chapter One
It is not easy flying to the Faroe Islands in April. I overnighted in Copenhagen. The following day I took a nearly empty plane that flew over beautifully clear Danish and Norwegian skies until reaching the islands, which were covered in thick, bumpy cloud. I am very grateful to Niclas Davidsen, who picked me up from the airport and gave me lodging. Sosialurin, the Faroese newspaper, was an informative resource. Statistics on foreign players are from the Brazilian Football Confederation's annual reports.
The prevalent view of the origin of the name Brazil is that it comes from Brazil-wood, a tree whose bark gave a red dye that was discovered in abundance by the first Portuguese navigators in South America
. The country became known as 'terra de Brasil', or Brazil-wood land, later abbreviated to Brazil. The country, according to this explanation, was named after the according to this explanation, was named frequently assumed – the other way Cantarino, G., Origins of Brazil, A Search
Mitchell, A. and Cantarino, G., Origins of Brazil, A Search for the Origins of the name Brazil, unpublished, 2000
Chapter Two
Mário Filho's classic book is the basis of almost all serious analysis of Brazilian football's first half century. In recent years, than a 'historical' text, and one which colours the facts to fit his friend Gilberto Freyre's theories. I have used knowledge gleaned from interviews with the sociologist Antonio Jorge Soares and Cesar Gordon and am much indebted to Leonardo Affonso Pereira's comprehensive study, Footballmania. Aidan Hamilton's history of the British in Brazil was my source for Charles Miller.
Filho, M., O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro (second edition), Civilizagao Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro, 1964
Freyre, G., The Gilberto Freyre Reader, Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1974
Hamilton, A., An Entirely Different Game, The British Influence on Brazilian Football, Mainstream Publishing, Edinburgh, 1998
Pedrosa, M. (ed.), Gol de letra: O futebol na literatura brasileira, Livraria Editora Gol, Rio de Janeiro, 1967
Pereira, L. A. de M., Footballmania, Uma Historia Social do Futebol no Rio de Janeiro, 1902-1938, Editora Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 2000
Ribeiro, A., O Diamante Eterno, Biografia de Leônidas da Silva, Gryphus, Rio de Janeiro, 1999
Toledo, L. H. de, No Pat's do Futebol, Jorge Zahar Editor, 2000
Chapter Three
There is no shortage of literature about the 1950 World Cup. Paulo Perdigão's book is the best, both for its analytic rigour and its obsessive passion. Paulo also lent me his documentary 'Paradise Lost' that he made about the Fateful Final, from which I took the images of Ghiggia's goal. I absorbed ideas from Roberto DaMatta's writings on football at several moments in the book, most of which can be found in the collection Universo do Futebol.
DaMatta, R. and others, Universo do Futebol: Esporte e Sociedade Brasileira, Edições Pinakotheke, Rio de Janeiro, 1982
Máximo, J., Maracanã, Meio século de paixão, Dorea Books and Art, São Paulo, 2000
Moraes Neto, G., Dossiê 50. Os onze jogadores revelam os segredos da maior tragedia do futebol brasileiro, Objetiva, 2000
Morales, E, Maracaná, Los Laberintos del cardcter, Ediciones Santillana, Montevideo, 2000
Moura, G. de A., O Rio corre para o Maracanã, Editora Fundação Getúlio Vargas, Rio de Janeiro, 1988
Muylaert, R., Barbosa. Um gol faz cinquenta anos, RMC Editora, 2000
Noguiera, A., Soares, J. and Muylaert, R., A Copa que ninguém viu e a que não queremos lembrar, Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1994
Perdigão, P., Anatomia de uma Derrota, Edição revista e ampliada, L&PM Editores, Porto Alegre, 2000
Schlee, A. G., Contos de Futebol, Mercardo Aberto, Porto Alegre, 1997. First published as Cuentos de Futbol, Ediciones de la Banda Oriental, Montevideo, Uruguay, 1995
Vieira, C, Maracanã, Templo dos Deuses Brasileiros, Mauad Editora, Rio de Janeiro, 2000
Chapter Four
I researched the Pareci at Rio's Indian Museum and at the National Library. Background about indio's life was taken from a long article by Ricardo Kotscho in Epoca. Information about the Xikrin do Catete was plundered from the standard reference book on Brazil's indigenous population:
Ricardo, C. A. (ed.), Povos Indígenas do Brasil 1996-2000, Instituto Socioambiental, São Paulo, 2000
Chapter Five
I chose João Pedro Stedile for the opening quote since he has nothing to do with football – the Landless Movement is a Marxist group that campaigns for land reform by squatting on disused land and demanding title. My comparisons with mythical creatures arose from conversations with the oral historian José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy. According to the Portuguese dictionary Aurélio, a 'garrincha' is the nickname in Pernambuco and Sergipe of the 'garriça', which – after days of research and dozens of calls-an English-speaker in the ornithology department of Rio's National Museum told me was a bird from the same family as the common wren. Ruy Castro's terrific biography of Garrincha formed the basis of my description of the player's life.
Azevedo, R., Armazém do Folclóre, Atica, São Paulo, 2000
Camara Cascudo, L. da, Dicionário do Folclóre Brasileiro, Editora Itatiaia, Belo Horizonte, 1993
Castro, R., Estrela Solitária, Um brasileiro chamado Garrincha, Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1995
Leite Lopes, J. S., The 'People's Joy' Vanishes: Considerations on the Death of a Soccer Player, Journal of Latin American Anthropology, 1999
Mendes Campos, P., O gol é necessdrio, cronicas esportivas, Civilizagao Brasileria, Rio de Janeiro, 2000
Monteiro Lobato, O Sacy Perere: Resultado de um inquerito, 1918, reproduced by Fundação Banco do Brasil, Rio de Janeiro, 1998
Various authors, Para Entender O Brasil, Editora Alegro, São Paulo, 2000
Chapter Six
There are no biographies of Mário Filho. I was reliant on conversations with Ruy Castro, who wrote the biography of his brother Nelson Rodrigues, for information on their family history.
It was difficult to decide which symbol-fans to write about since there are so many. I feel obliged to mention Salvador club Bahia, who have the most colourful supporters I came across. At one Bahia game I saw several women in superwoman leotards – superman is the team mascot – and a man rolled up entirely in toilet roll.
Castro, R., O Anjo Pornogrdfico, A Vida de Nelson Rodrigues, Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1992
Filho, M., Historias do Flamengo (second edition), Gernasa, Rio de Janeiro, date unknown
Filho, M., O Sapo de Arubinha (ed. Castro), Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1994
Kfouri, J., Corinthians, paixão e gloria, Dorea Books and Art, São Paulo, 1996
Rodrigues, N. and Filho, M., Fla-Flu . . . e as Multidões Despertam, Edição Europa, Rio de Janeiro, 1987
Toledo, L. H. de., Torcidas Organizadas de Futebol, Editora Autores Associados, Campinas, 1996
Chapter Seven
I first read about Brejinho in Mário Magalhães' insightful collection of football journalism. The book also revealed many other stories I followed up in other chapters.
Magalhães, M., Viagem ao pat's do futebol, Dorea Books and Art, São Paulo, 1998
Chapter Eight
As a result of my interview with Roza FC, local TV and press started to cover the team. New players became involved and Roza now intend to represent Brazil in the 2002 Gay Games in Sydney.
Decourt, G. C, Aconteceu, sim!, Pannartz, São Paulo, 1987
Chapter Nine
Padre Antonio Carlos Barreiro and his hardworking staff at the Room of Miracles helped me beyond their call of duty. My understanding of the complicated theology of Brazilian faiths was aided with advice from Ralph dellaCava, of Columbia University, and Regina Novaes, of Rio's Institute for Religious Studies.
Rosenfeld, A., O Futebol no Brasil, 1956, in the journal Argumento, no. 4, Paz e Terra, São Paulo, 1974
Chapter Ten
Although compiling lists of curious Brazilian names is nearly a national hobby, there is almost no serious research into it. Max Gehringer, Mário Souto Maior and Marcos de Castro suggested some of the more revealing examples. The two 'futebol' dictionaries were also indispensable.
Amado, J., A Bola e o Goleiro, Editora Record, Rio de Janeiro, 1984
Buarque de Holanda, S., Raizes do Brasil, Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1936
Cabral, S., No Tempo de Art Barroso, Lumiar Editora, Rio de Janeiro, 1993
Castro, M. de., A Imprensa e o Caos na Ortografia, Editora Record, Rio de Janeiro, 1998
Maranhao, H., Dicionário de Futebol, Editora Record, Rio de Janeiro, 1998
Marques, J. C, O Futebol em Nelson Rodrigues, Educ, São Paulo, 2000
Penna, L., Dicionário Popular de Futebol, O ABC das arquibancadas, Editora Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 1998
Proenca, I. C, Futebol e Palavra, Livraria José Olympio Editora, Rio de Janeiro, 1981
Rodrigues, N., A Pdtria em Chuteiras, Novas Cronicas de Futebol (ed. Castro), Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1994
Rodrigues, N., A Sombra das Chuteiras Imortais, Cronicas de Futebol (ed. Castro), Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1993
Rodrigues, N., A Vida Como Ela É . . . (ed. Castro), Companhia Das Letras, São Paulo, 1992
Soares, E., A Bola no Ar, O Radio Esportivo em São Paulo, Summus, São Paulo, 1994
Souto Maior, M., Nomes Proprios Pouco Comuns, Bagago, Recife, 1996
Verissimo, L. E, A Eterna Privacdo do Zagueiro Absoluto, as melhoras cronicas de futebol, cinema e literatura, Objetiva, Rio de Janeiro, 1999
Chapter Eleven
My stay in Manaus was made cheaper courtesy of the Amazonas tourist board, which paid for my accommodation. Sidney Netto kindly sent me his doctorate on the Big Kickabout from the University of Porto, Portugal. The freshness of the extracts from A Critica is perhaps because they were among the first articles ever written by Marcia Guimaraes, a twenty-year-old intern.
Filho. P., Estudos de Historia do Amazonas, Valer Editora, Manaus, 2000
Netto, S., A Organizacao nas Estruturas Desportivas. Um Estudo De Caso Sobre O Campeonato De Peladas Do Amazonas – Peladao, Universidade do Porto, 2001
Chapter Twelve