Travel Reference
In-Depth Information
Football
Far more than just a game, football is a central part of popular culture in
Brazil, with all Brazilians fiercely proud of the country's record of being the
only country to have qualified for all World Cups, and to have won more of
them than any other nation. Brazilian fans are the most demanding in the
world; it is not enough to win, Brazilians insist on winning in style, using the
untranslatable but self-explanatory
futebol-arte
. Even though the Brazilian
leagues are still, by and large, feeder leagues for the high-paying teams of
Europe, there are such reserves of talent in the country that very high-quality
football is still the rule in most of the big cities. And everywhere you find that
compulsive mix of brilliant attack and fragile defending that makes the
Brazilian national team the most charismatic side in the world, win or lose.
Early days
British railway engineers introduced football to Brazil in the 1880s, and, as in
Argentina, the
British influence
is still visible in football vocabulary (
futebol
,
pênalti
)
and in the names of some of Brazil's oldest teams, like São Paulo's Coríntians (the now
defunct Corinthian Football Club was one of London's first teams). By the 1920s the
Rio and São Paulo state leagues that still largely dominate Brazilian football were up and
running. Brazil became the first South American country to send a team to compete in
Europe, to Italy in 1934, and already by then Brazilians had realized that football was far
too important for race to get in the way: Brazil's first World Cup star,
Leônidas
, who
fascinated Europeans in the 1930s with his outlandish skills, was Afro-Brazilian.
Getúlio Vargas was the first in a long line of Brazilian presidents to make political
capital out of the game, building the gorgeous Art Deco Pacaembu stadium in São
Paulo in the 1930s, and then bringing the
1950 World Cup
to Brazil by constructing
what has become one of the game's great global temples, the
Maracanã
in Rio. In that
competition, Brazil had what many of the older generation still think was the greatest
Brazilian side ever; the team hammered everyone, then came up against Uruguay in
the final, where a draw would have been enough to secure Brazil's first
copa.
Brazil
went in at half-time ahead 1-0 but the Uruguayans hadn't read the script and won 2-1,
a national trauma that still haunts popular memory sixty years on - most notably in a
serious argument over whether to play the final of the
2014 World Cup
in the Maracanã,
on the grounds that it may be jinxed.
BRAZIL'S DOMESTIC LEAGUE
Brazil's top domestic football league, the
Campeonato Brasileiro Série A
, is contested
annually by twenty teams (typically May to December), with the standard of play usually
very high, and the level of support often fanatical. In recent years violence in the terraces has
marred several games: though top teams and stadiums have been included in the relevant
chapters of the guide, always check with locals (or your hotel) before heading to a match.
Though Rio has traditionally dominated the league - Botafogo, Flamengo and Fluminense
are almost always represented - São Paulo teams have been equally successful, and in recent
years teams such as Atlético Mineiro and Cruzeiro (from Belo Horizonte) and Grêmio and Sport
Club Internacional (from Porto Alegre) have made a bigger impact. Allegiances are taken very
seriously; if you decide to don a team shirt or cap, expect to attract a fair degree of attention
from locals as you walk around, even as a foreign tourist.
