Brazil face Argentina in Buenos Aires tonight in a crucial World Cup qualifying tie. Win or lose, however, Brazil’s future looks less than bright under unpopular manager Dunga. But, as James Young explains, the country’s footballing problems run much deeper than that – and it might just be the fault of the fans. 

By James Young
Belo Horizonte

“Brazil needs a coach with scientific knowledge, coupled with the wisdom to be a good observer and a desire to win, while playing attractively. Forget it! It was just a fantasy, and now it’s gone. The reality is quite different, and much sadder. The reality is Dunga,” wrote 1970 World Cup winner Tostão after the Seleção appointed its new manager after the World Cup. And not much Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri had done since has proved him wrong.

Sure, there were a few perky friendly victories between the Mundial and this year’s Copa America in Chile. In those games Brazil at least looked energetic and organised, and were certainly an improvement on the doleful lot who succumbed so humiliatingly to Germany in Belo Horizonte in the World Cup semi-final. But, Neymar aside, the lack of attacking flair and creativity was painfully obvious. Dunga’s Brazil were a counter-attacking side, the long, symphonic passing movements of old a fading memory.

Still, those effective, if unappealing friendly wins seemed like the glory days compared with Brazil’s performances in Chile. Dunga’s team were turgid throughout the tournament, losing to Colombia and only squeaking past Peru and Venezuela in the group stages, before getting knocked out by Paraguay in the quarter-finals.

Things have not improved much since then. Brazil were no match for Chile and Alexis Sanchez in their opening World Cup qualifying game in Santiago, and were unimpressive again in a win over Venezuela in Fortaleza. Now, Dunga’s side travel to Buenos Aires to face the old enemy Argentina – themselves struggling for form after a miserable start to the qualifying campaign.

Dunga, with his thuggish pitch-side manner and aggressive approach to dealing with the media, makes an easy cartoon villain. But perhaps the most worrying thing for Brazilian fans is the lack of alternatives. The hire ‘em, fire ‘em short term thinking of the country’s clubs means that talented young managers are an endangered species in Brazil. Dunga is the symptom, rather than the cause of the disease that ails Brazilian football.

It was reported this week that of the twenty coaches who began the Serie A season back in May, only two – unsurprisingly, Tite at Corinthians and Levir Culpi at Atletico Mineiro, the country’s top two teams – were still standing by its end. It was the lowest number since 2005.

In the last few weeks alone, with the season just a few games from its end, coaches were sacked by Coritiba and Avaí (both fighting relegation) and São Paulo (trying to finish in the top four and earn a spot in next year’s Copa Libertadores).

The stumbling explanation for the sacking of manager Doriva from São Paulo director of football Gustavo Vieira de Oliveira gave a rather chilling insight into the thinking, or the lack of it, that goes on behind the scenes in Brazilian football. “From his performance in this short period of time, and the observations we’ve made of his work, we don’t see anything wrong, but we want to try something else.” Doriva had been in charge for seven games and just over a month.

A report by the Mexican publication El Economista last year revealed that coaches in Brazil last just 15 games on average, compared to around 54 in Germany, 80 in England, and 88 in Major League Soccer. In the ten year period covered by the survey, at least four clubs had employed close to 40 coaches – or four a year.

Such impatience has two obvious negative outcomes. One is a lack of understanding and cohesion on the pitch. While Corinthians and Atlético Mineiro this year, and Cruzeiro in 2013 and 2014 have played intense, fast-paced football, with the ball (generally) moving quickly from boot to boot, such collective awareness is rare.

Most Brazilian league games are cumbersome affairs, with players taking a touch (often two) to control the ball before pausing and looking around in search of a teammate. The telepathic awareness of others’ movement and positioning that comes from playing in the same system over a long period, best typified in recent years by Barcelona, is an elusive dream.

The other consequence is that the confidence, willingness to experiment, and ultimately careers of promising young coaches are destroyed. Dado Cavalcanti, manager of Serie B side Paysandu, has coached 15 clubs in nine years – before his 35^th birthday. After doing well at Avaí in 2008 and 2009, Silas managed Grêmio for eight months, and was then sacked by Flamengo after just over a month in charge. In 2012 Grêmio sacked Caio Junior, who had coached an impressive Botafogo team in 2011, after just eight games in charge.

As a result, coaching jobs at the biggest Brazilian clubs tend to go to the same old faces, such as Muricy Ramalho, Dorival Junior (admittedly currently doing well with Santos), Celso Roth and Vanderlei Luxemburgo. One of the names mentioned in connection with the vacant position at São Paulo is Paulo Autori, who has coached close to 40 teams and has won nothing of note in the last ten years.

Even Brazil’s best coaches are flawed. Corinthians’ Tite is the current toast of Brazilian football, but he has had a long and chequered career, and favours a prosaic style of football that is not always easy on the eye. Atlético Mineiro’s Levir Culpi and Marcelo Oliveira, who did so well at Cruzeiro and now manages Palmeiras, while attack minded coaches, can be tactically naive.

All of which goes some way to explaining why, when the CBF (“the Brazilian FA”) ran out of patience with Mano Menezes as Brazil coach in 2012, they turned, with ultimately disastrous results, to Luiz Felipe Scolari (who managed the team in 2001 and 2002) and, following Scolari, appointed Dunga (who had coached the Seleção between 2006 and 2010).

Brazil’s club directors and football administrators are largely to blame for the situation. Club presidents and their posses, who more often than not lack the clear-headed professionalism and conviction required to maintain a long-term strategy, are democratically elected, meaning they depend on the approval of the fans to keep their jobs. And if the team is losing, that approval will disappear very quickly.

Which means, by a rather ironic twist, that as much as Brazilian fans may loathe Dunga, they may be at least partly responsible for him getting the job in the first place.

By howling for the head of their coaches after just a handful of defeats – the torrents of social media abuse aimed at Atlético manager Levir Culpi now his team’s bid to win the title seems to have fallen short are only one example – they fuel the atmosphere of impatient, hysterical short-termism that pervades the Brazilian game and that is a direct cause of the country’s dearth of coaching talent.

Win or lose in Buenos Aires tonight, it is Brazilian football that is paying the price.

Brazilians’ love for soccer has been exploited by crooks, dictators, and dirty politicians for decades. Above, dictator Emilio Médici celebrates after his country’s 1970 World Cup victory.

By Mauricio Savarese

When former Brazilian soccer boss José Maria Marin was arrested in Switzerland at the end of May, most fans here just knew him as the old guy that stole a medal from a teenage player in 2012. His predecessor, Ricardo Teixeira, was a much more famous figure, famously involved in various corruption scandals. But as the media dug deeper into the 83-year-old Marin’s career, it became clear that the frail man who chaired Brazil’s football confederation (the CBF) during last year’s World Cup was one more example of how politics and football work hand in hand in Brazil.

But it’s been that way for a long time. Let’s take a walk down memory lane.

Rocky start

Brazilian politicians didn’t fall in love with soccer at first sight. Soccer and politics became entwined here just weeks before the 1950 World Cup, as Brazilians took to the streets in protest.

They didn’t demonstrate against high costs in the construction of Maracanã stadium, but small protests before the first World Cup in Brazil did have something in common with protests here in 2013 and 2014. They started against a rise in transportation costs, and then the tournament served to put a spotlight on the demonstrations and the issues they raised, such as economic policy changes undertaken by President Eurico Gaspar Dutra (1946-1951), the man who brought the tournament to Brazil. One year later, former dictator Getulio Vargas would channel that frustration and win a democratic election.

With only 13 participants, the first World Cup in Brazil, seen by many as a test event for the country after World War II (1939-1945) was an organizational success. But the shocking loss to Uruguay in the final was felt as a failure of the country itself. Many politicians decided to stay away from football as a result, with the exception of some that were fans first and public figures second – such as São Paulo mayor Porfirio da Paz, a founder of São Paulo FC.

The rise of Brazilian football, and the rise of Brazil

When Brazil won the 1958 World Cup, however, politicians changed their minds. President Juscelino Kubitschek (1956-1961), a former player at América in Minas Gerais, used the iconic players as a symbol of the modernization of the country – as he also used bossa-nova music and the construction of the new capital, Brasília. Brazilian soccer was moving past the shame of the 1950 loss and the country now actually had high hopes for the future.

That sentiment only grew after a second title was won in Chile, in 1962. But then the military dictatorship came, and took soccer with it.

In the first years of the regime, which began in 1964, it wasn’t clear what would happen with soccer, or indeed with politics.

Brazil had its worst World Cup campaign ever in England 1966, where the country failed to even advance past the group stage. Pelé, the national hero, was injured by Portugal’s constant kicks.

In Brasília, the capital, military leaders couldn’t decide whether they would remain in office. Their excuse for the coup was always that they would free Brazil from alleged communist influence and President João Goulart (1961-1964) and hold new elections, but they were holding on to power. Football club executives were lost: they didn’t know whether to be friends with the generals or hold on to old ties.

The dictatorship takes control of the pitch

Generals sent mixed messages by keeping Congress and a functioning Supreme Court open while also interfering. But when they decided to remain in power definitively and issued the dictatorial decrees of 1968, they also took hold of Brazilian soccer as a propaganda tool.

CBF chairman João Havelange, a cheerleader of military administrations, was watching. Although he named communist journalist João Saldanha as coach Brazil in 1969 (a move to calm the press after a number of bad results), Havelange was dying to please dictator Emilio Médici (1969-1974).

Opportunity knocked. Médici wanted “Fearless João” to take clumsy centerforward Dadá Maravilha to the Mexico World Cup in 1970.

Coach Saldanha wouldn’t have it. “I don’t pick his ministers and he doesn’t pick my players.” As a replacement, Havelange chose Mario Zagallo, a two-time World Cup champion who was present in the 1950 tragedy as a young Army recruit. The dictator Médici, a violent man that the Flamengo crowd loved seeing in the Maracanã every now and then, got even more attention from the CBF – military personnel dominated Brazil’s preparation for the tournament: fitness coaches, junior executives, and travel organizers, were all linked to the Armed Forces.

The dictatorship supported that Seleção, or national team, so much that Brazil’s leftist and liberal militants promised to cheer against it. But those people, unlike Médici, were only human…they ended up cheering anyways. The 1970 team was so fantastic that dictatorship propaganda is now the last thing most Brazilians think of it. Upon their return, friends of the armed forces were all over the players – São Paulo’s appointed mayor Paulo Maluf even gave them Volkswagens.

And Medici remained popular for a while, but the dictators would soon find out that you can’t win a World Cup every day.

White elephants to prop up the military, and the fall

There were two political parties in Brazil’s fake democracy in those days: Arena (the National Renewal Alliance) to support the military and MDB (Brazilian Democratic Movement), which brought together all kinds of opposition parties, from socialists to free-market liberals. They competed for seats in Congress and for a few mayoral positions – but never in large capitals, of course.

Wherever friends of the dictatorship couldn’t gather much popular support, soccer was the solution: a new stadium would pop up and a local team would be included in national tournaments. Many white elephants were inaugurated at the time, such as the Castelão in Fortaleza (1973) and the Mané Garrincha in Brasilia (1974). They would be later renovated to become brand new white elephants for the 2014 World Cup.

It was during the dictatorship that now-disgraced Marin first appears in Brazilian soccer as an executive. Formerly a mediocre player for São Paulo FC, he used a position in the club as a ladder to his political aspirations. In 1975, as a very conservative state congressman in São Paulo, he started a campaign against journalist Vladimir Herzog, a key editor at Cultura, the state-owned TV channel. Weeks later Herzog, was killed by those who tortured him in prison. Herzog’s family holds Marin responsible, among others, for the assassination to this day.

This was the beginning of the end for dictators Ernesto Geisel (1974-1979) and João Figueiredo (1979-1985). Geisel didn’t profit much from soccer, but he did try hard. Brazil was defeated in the 1974 World Cup by Holland and in 1978 by Argentina, then ruled by an even more violent dictatorship. Brazil’s economic miracle was proving to be a farce and the regime decided to inflate soccer’s first division to maintain some of its popularity.

That move would lead stars like Zico, Falcão and Socrates travel to small towns to please crowds. The number of clubs playing in the Brazilian championship from 1975 to 1979 rose year after year: 44, 54, 62, 74 and then an astonishing 94. And though generals stayed in control of the CBF, Brazil without Pelé wasn’t as big of a propaganda machine. When the Seleção became great again, in 1982 already under Figueiredo, it was filled with pro-democratic players and captained by activist Socrates.

The end of Marin

After his time as a São Paulo legislator that pushed against allegedly communist journalists, Marin took another job he didn’t get a single vote for: he became governor of São Paulo between 1982 and 1983, appointed by the dictatorship, at the same time he was the president of São Paulo’s soccer association. But when Brazil became a democracy again, in 1985, he had no trouble adapting: he spearheaded the Seleção organization for the Mexico World Cup. When Ricardo Teixeira took over the CBF in 1989, he was one of his vice-presidents. In 2012, after his tutor got in trouble with Swiss courts, he rose to the top, since he was the oldest on the job.

In the 13 years he spent as CBF vice-president, in a more and more democratic Brazil, Marin was very discreet; to Brazilian ears he sounded like a politician from the sixties. Yes, he is a man of soccer and politics, but he wasn’t nearly as popular as club officials that got to Congress to get better kickbacks from sponsors, or businessmen that bought clubs to launder money for political campaigns. He was surely no Teixeira, who managed to turn President Luiz Inácio “Lula” da Silva from a critic into a whiskey buddy on lazy Brasília Saturday afternoons.

Marin is one of the survivors that used old political ties to remain connected to soccer — ties that stopped former guerrilla and now President Dilma Rousseff from taking pictures near him. In prison, he must be thinking of all the favors he made to connect his successor and right arm at CBF, new president Marco Polo del Nero, to the main leaders of the opposition, such as defeated presidential hopeful Aécio Neves. Too bad his long experience with Brazilian politics and soccer won’t be of much use with the FBI.

Mauricio Savarese is a freelance journalist based in São Paulo and co-author of A to Zico: an Alphabet of Brazilian Football

A testing route to the final lies ahead, with Colombia up next. The players and coach Luiz Felipe Scolari have at times looked unnerved by the pressure and emotion of playing a World Cup at home, with captain Thiago Silva crying before even taking the field against Croatia, and Scolari growling at journalists in the press conference that followed the Mexico game.

The World Cup will not fall apart if Brazil are eliminated, but there is no doubt that those Brazilians caught up in the patriotic fervor currently swirling around the country (encouraged in no small part by a rash of tub-thumping TV commercials) might take a rather dimmer view of the tournament should the unthinkable happen and Brazil are knocked out.

World Cup melting pot

In a country where even the most erudite publications and media outlets continue to use the word gringo as a catch-all for foreigners of every stripe, and where the world is seemingly divided into Brazilians and non-Brazilians, the arrival of hundreds and thousands of visiting fans has been an eye-opening experience. It is unlikely, in fact, that Brazilians have ever had quite such an opportunity to observe the rest of the world up close.

For the most part those fans have done themselves proud, supporting their teams loudly, passionately and in many different ways. Stadiums have echoed to the sound of throaty, old-school and defiant English fans (who amusingly refused to participate in such frivolity as “the wave”) and raucous, flare-waving Algerians. Hordes of Argentinians have invaded the Maracanã and the Beira-Rio in Porto Alegre, singing about why Maradona is better than Pelé. An army of Mexicans have made Julio Cesar and the rest of the Brazil team feel that as though they were playing at the Estadio Azteca and not the Estadio Castelão. There have been American frat boys and swaggering Germans drinking together in rain-lashed Recife. Thousands of boisterous Colombians have swamped Belo Horizonte and multitudes of Chileans have taken over Copacabana. In general, all this cross-border intermingling has passed off peacefully. The world has come to Brazil and been made to feel welcome. Perhaps, in return, the host country has learnt a little bit about the world beyond its borders.

Increasingly, Brazilians are blasé about two things most everyone used to be excited about – the FIFA World Cup and a wave of protests. We’ll see which way the pendulum swings again come June. Above, last year’s protests become the theme of a small ‘bloco’ at this year’s Carnaval.

By Mauricio Savarese

Attitudes went from “This is going to massive,” “Everyone will be fired up” and “It will change Brazil forever” to “Not again…,” “I can’t wait for this to be over” and “There is just too much hype.”

Radicals aside, there are now few Brazilians overly enthusiastic about either of the two mutually antagonistic events taking place in the country this year: the FIFA World Cup and the protests that have rocked the streets since June. Interest faded very slowly; people got sick of infrastructure issues around the World Cup and violence from agitators and police during protests.

Now these notions are measurable. When the massive protest movement kicked off, pollster Datafolha said 81% of Brazilians supported them, against everything-that-is-wrong-here. That support has now dropped to 52%. Even worse for activists: the criticism of their agenda is rising. Now 42% of Brazilians are against any protests at all. Only 15% held this view last summer, during the Confederations Cup.

Another poll could be seen as a sign that the government’s nationalistic campaign for the World Cup had some effects. Pollster MDA says 85% of Brazilians believe there will be protests during football’s creme de la creme, but only 15% considered actually being in them. That could lead one to believe there is widespread support for hosting the tournament. But that isn’t the case, either.

Almost 51% of Brazilians say they wouldn’t support a bid to host the tournament if it were to be made today, MDA says. Datafolha says 52% of locals don’t approve of FIFA’s main event being hosted here. In November 2008, impressive 79% of the people were for it all.

We can guess at motives. Four World Cup stadia (São Paulo, Curitiba, Cuiabá, and Porto Alegre) are still at risk and many reject the high amount of money spent, which they’d like to see go somewhere else,

There is usually bitterness before big sporting events. Brazilians are showing that attitude now, but that doesn’t it support couldn’t skyrocket the moment the Cup starts and Brazil takes on Croatia in Corinthians Arena.

For protesters, the question is whether they can get support from those who are critical of the World Cup organization, but not as excited to parrot their ubiquitous “there will be no Cup” slogan.

For football fans, the best bet seems to be on using well the period between June 12 and July 13, despite the fact that Brazil neither prepared appropriately nor invested as wisely as necessary. They can argue that a proper debate on how things went would be more appropriate in the general elections, in October. They will have 64 matches watched by billions supporting their cause.

But Brazil is a surprising country, and protesters could break that advantage if they get back in touch with the aspirations of the majority. That is not the case now. If they insist with the politics of no that have made people less interested, it may even be difficult even to get Brazilians to the polling stations later this year and deliver some attention to their grievances.

As of now, the only thing massive thing most Brazilians can relate to is sheer boredom.

In the wake of the tragedy at the stadium to host the opening match in 2014 (pictured above), Mauricio Savarese speculates on the political logic behind the selection of the 12 host cities.

By Mauricio Savarese

“Who are the most powerful governors and mayors in Brazil?”

Back in 2008, that was a strange question to ask someone involved in choosing the 2014 World Cup host cities. But I did. So off the record, one of those guys pored over the map for the presidential elections, friends that former President Lula had to please and opposition members that couldn’t be ignored. He said nothing about projects, common sense or legacy.

I thought he was just a tactless political analyst. But in the end he got it all right when the venues were announced in 2009.

To understand delays, missed deadlines and excessive spending it is important to know how the 12 host cities were chosen. After all, Brazil could have had a tournament with only eight stadia. It could also have made the arenas smaller in cities where local professional football is just a fantasy – as is the case in Brasilia, Manaus and Cuiaba. And if the issue really was bringing more tourists into great cities practically unknown abroad, then Belem, Florianopolis and Goiania would be in.

The most controversial case is that of Cuiabá, Mato Grosso. It sits in a place with little infrastructure, tradition in the sport or touristic appeal. It seems the most bizarre choice of them all. Its stadium almost certainly won’t be finished by the end of the year. But it was one of the first to be counted in. The main reason: former governor and soybeans magnate Blairo Maggi was a key ally for the ruling Worker’s Party (PT) to keep. He is a great fundraiser and a calming presence in his party.

The Amazon was the excuse for selecting Manaus. But it wasn’t that easy: Belem was a bitter rival and it is the capital of a state governed then by another PT politician, Ana Julia Carepa. But former governor Eduardo Braga (Amazonas state) was a rising star in the government coalition. Everyone knew that he is a potential leader of the Senate and that he controlls votes in the North. Carepa was going the opposite way – bound for defeat in 2010. Manaus won, Carepa lost.

Fortaleza, one of the most violent cities in Brazil, is getting an astonishing six World Cup matches mainly because governor Cid Gomes is a close ally to both Lula and President Dilma Rousseff. He is such a key figure in the highly populated Northeast region that he is now eagerly attacking former party colleague and presidential hopeful Eduardo Campos so he can help Rousseff keep her job at the 2014 elections – to be held shortly after the World Cup.

Curitiba’s bid was supported by two strong elements: the support of former governor Roberto Requiao, who is now a maverick at the Senate, and the difficulties PT has in Santa Catarina, the state where beautiful and football crazy Florianopolis is located. Natal’s case was a little different: governor Rosalba Ciarlini was an important interlocutor within the opposition and runs a state that has given ministers, a speaker of the House and key congressmen to Rousseff’s administration.

Brasilia’s Mane Garrincha stadium was more of a case of political megalomania. Before he became the first Brazilian governor to be jailed during his term, the opposition’s Jose Roberto Arruda decided he would try to win the right to hold the opener from Sao Paulo. To do that, he would have to build a venue for about 70,000 people in a city where you don’t get that many people even if you add together all the attendants at all of the local league’s fixtures. Later, the PT’s Agnelo Queiroz insisted.

The troubled Arena Corinthians was also a political pick, although that had more to do with Lula’s passion for his club than party politics. At first, the opener would be at São Paulo FC’s Morumbi stadium. A completely new one only made it into the plans after a Corinthians chairman scrapped a deal on broadcasting rights and signed a deal that pleased the former head of the Brazilian FA, disgraced Ricardo Teixeira.

Sao Paulo’s new arena was also suitable to deflate Belo Horizonte’s bid for the opener – a late, but credible competitor because of former governor Aecio Neves’ support. Neves is set to be the main contender against Rousseff in 2014, although polls now say the incumbent is likely to remain in power.

Rio, Salvador, Recife and Porto Alegre were all natural candidates to host World Cup matches, regardless of their possible political benefits.

It could have been worse. One of the closest allies to Presidents Lula and Rousseff is the Viana clan, running the distant state of Acre on the behalf of PT since time immemorial. Their capital, Rio Branco, is a tiny city of about 300,000 inhabitants in the middle of the jungle. That analyst I talked to a few years ago said then the place actually had a chance. Most Brazilians laughed pretty hard at that possibility. But the run up to 2014 shows a little love can always make stadiums happen.

Mauricio Savarese is a Brazilian journalist, originally from Ipiranga, in São Paulo’s zona sul, and is the author of the blog, “A Brazilian operating in this area.” He was formerly a reporter in Brasília for UOL and is active on Twitter.

With the Pope in Rio, 58,000 Galo fans asked God for help against Paraguay’s Olimpia. It seems he showed up.

By Dom Phillips

You had to feel sorry for the Atlético Mineiro fans, for so long  the nearly men of the Brazilian championship. Just after midnight this Thursday morning, at the end of extra time, the club’s first ever Libertadores victory was so close they could taste it, and yet, somehow, still torturously out of reach.

There was tension and drama from the off – encapsulated by the sight of a supporter in Atlético bobble hat, but no shirt, closing his eyes, nodding his head to the chanting of the crowd, stretching out his arms and sinking to his knees as if in prayer. Everybody in the newly done-up Mineirão stadium seemed to be invoking God’s help for victory.

There were 58,000 fans of Galo – or cockerel – as Atlético are nicknamed in Minerão in Belo Horizonte and the noise as 90 minutes went to extra time and then penalties was intense and unrelenting: a shrill bombardment of cheering, cursing and whistling, the sound of dreams about to be either realised or crushed.

Galo started Wednesday night’s game, second leg of this final of South American’s biggest soccer championship (the continent’s Champions League) against Paraguay’s Olimpia with a 2-0 disadvantage from the first game last week. But the idea that they might not actually turn this around and win was clearly not an option their fanatical supporters were prepared to consider.

Olimpia were not going to roll over though and survived wave upon wave of Galo attacks. Atlético fans roared their anthem, the endearing, and indeed inspiring: “Eu acredito!”, or “I believe!” But even with goals from Jô and Leonardo Silva putting them two up on this tie, overall they were still level by the end of normal time.

If sheer power of will were enough, it would have long been over. But it’s not the passion of the players or the fans that counts, it’s the goals the team scores. Galo just couldn’t seem to put that third one away, no matter how close they came.

Olimpia, who have won three Libertadores, were no pushovers. They looked organised in defence and dangerous on the break. Victor in goal saved Galo more than once, just as he saved them time and again on their way to the final.

Olimpia suffered too. The game was nearing its end, when, with Atlético 1-0 up, the Paraguayan team’s Juan Carlos Ferreyra slipped past Galo keeper Victor and then, somehow, fell over in front of the open goal. It was a failure he will remember for the rest of his life, one that perhaps lost them the title. Then their defender Manzur was sent off – and Silva saved Galo with a headed goal.

With the score level over both games, the game went to extra time but despite the bellowing of the crowd, Galo could not make any of their strikes count. As fans behind the goal recited the Our Father, it was penalties. The tension, the noise, the anxiety by this point was barely tolerable even for bystanders. For Atlético fans and players, it must have been unbearable.

It was a particularly delicious moment for their striker Ronaldinho. The 33-year-old was twice named the world’s best player and had won pretty much everything else in football, including the 2002 World Cup with Brazil, and a Champions League and Spanish championship with Barcelona.

But since returning to Brazil with Flamengo in 2011, he had only nabbed state championship trophies. He had surprised everyone when he signed for Atlético in 2012 and appeared to regain some of his old brilliance. And he had shown flashes of genius as Atlético battled their way to their victory, but nothing particularly in this game. But his team-mates still sang his praises afterwards.

Galo coach Cuca, himself long regarded as a “nearly man” of Brazilian soccer, tried three times to host the press conference after the game, but his players kept sneaking up behind him to douse him in champagne. Even after the press conference finished, Galo striker Bernard was running around barefoot with a jester’s hat on his head.

Security at one point tried to stop him entering the press room where the press conference had been held, thinking he was an overexcited fan who had somehow snuck in. “But I’m a player!” he protested. Cornered again by quote-hungry journalists, he praised his team’s spirit.

“It’s wonderful to arrive at training and see everyone smiling, everyone joking and nobody with a long face. Because in football unfortunately there are eleven players and you can’t keep all of them happy,” he said. “It is the happiness that God gives us to be able to play football.”

In Belo Horizonte today, only fans of Atlético’s bitter city rivals Cruzeiro, themselves twice Libertadores champioins, would disagree with him.

Though both the stadium and Brazil’s national side are still ‘under construction,’ Sunday’s match was a largely successful and inspiring example of what the World Cup here can be. Above, a dedicated England fan…who is Brazilian.

By Dom Phillips

Be careful around the Maracanã, because that part of town can be a bit sketchy, one carioca, or Rio native, told me before the world famous stadium’s reopening game between Brazil and England on Sunday.

But instead of street kids hustling for change, I was met leaving the São Cristóvão station by smiling, green-clad helpers holding giant cardboard hands that pointed the way up a flyover, which had been closed to traffic and was now full of pedestrians snaking their way peacefully to the newly rebuilt Maracanã stadium.

It was clear on the metro journey out that this was going to run smoothly. In my carriage, a young, and very pale, English couple in England team shirts sat quietly, surrounded by Brazilians in green and yellow, including a baby on its mother’s lap. At bars around the ground before the game, more England fans drank beer on the pavements in their red or white tops – some 900 apparently made the trip over, I was later told. They were an incongruous sight on Rio streets, particularly here in the centre, a long way from the Southern tourist beaches of Copacabana and Ipanema. A sign of how much of a shock Rio is in for when the gringos – as all foreigners are called – actually show up in force, and of how interesting that might be for everybody concerned.

One São Paulo-based English ex-pat, wearing a smart red England shirt, told me before the game that he actually wanted Brazil to win, because it would be better overall for the World Cup and that’s what we all wanted. A British journalist even turned up to the game in a Brazil vest. The England supporters were drowned out with boos by Brazilian fans every time they attempted to start up a chant. But the mood amongst the 66,000 that watched the 2-2 draw in which both England’s Wayne Rooney and Brazil’s Paulinho both scored memorable goals was overwhelmingly affable, and while this was not a classic, it was still a hugely entertaining game.

Rooney’s goal was a long, curling strike from outside the box that had TV Globo commentators discussing its “surgical precision” – exactly the sort of golaço, as a beautiful goal is called in Portuguese, the opening game needed. Paulinho’s whiplash rebound volley to equalise exploded into the net. Fred hit his home hard. Neymar threw in some dazzles in a first half where Brazil played better.

Off the pitch, nothing went badly wrong. Sighs of relief all around official circles, you might imagine. Rio really needed this to go well, after a run of crimes and disasters made all the wrong international headlines for a city with two enormous international sports events to stage.

An American exchange student was brutally gang raped and her French boyfriend badly beaten on a collective transport van, and the vans have now been banned in South Rio’s tourist areas. After an argument between a disgruntled student and its driver, a bus careered off a flyover in central Rio, killing seven. Shootings have broken out in so-called pacified favelas like the Complexo do Alemão. A German tourist was shot and badly injured during a hold-up in Rocinha, a favela pacified in 2011.

The Brazilian authorities had locked down the entire area around the Maracanã, sealing off a sort of protection zone around the stadium which was closed to traffic. A helicopter buzzed overhead, there were armed police and soldiers on the streets, as well as the army of green-clad helpers, some of whom used megaphones to move the crowds.

In the days before the match, a roof panel fell off a stadium in Salvador and a Rio judge suspended Sunday’s match on safety grounds, later lifting the injunction. In March Rio’s other big stadium, the Engenhão, was closed for safety reasons. Photos of the Maracanã looking like a building site have been bouncing around Brazilian news sites.

But on the day, even though it is covered in plaster dust and not quite finished, the stadium looked impressive – particularly on the giant screens, as the camera swept around the concrete circles of this enormous gladiatorial bowl. Even the view from the rear of the stadium was stunning, as the sun set on the mountains that circle it and glinted on a hilltop favela.

It was a reminder that the World Cup is, for the vast billions of people who watch it, a television event. And if there is one thing that Rio – this vainest of cities, home to Brazil’s biggest television network and much of its cinema – knows, it is how to look good on television.

Sunday’s football was not classic, nor did it leave Brazil fans, or even coach Luiz Scolari happy. But with four goals in the second half, plenty of pace, and a handful of great moments, it was enough to whet your appetite for more big, set-piece games in a setting like this. Exactly what the World Cup promises.

Brazil needs its national side to raise the bar: Brazilian media have joked that both the Maracanã and the team are “under construction”. But the side did play with more bite. And the morning after the game, Brazil star Neymar was already at his new club Barcelona – many hope his long-awaited move to Europe will raise his game just as it has lifted that of his Brazil team-mate Lucas, now at PSG.

While for one Brazilian soccer fan, Sunday’s game was a dream come true. Miguel Salek Junior, 31, who writes for a Brazilian football website and has never been to the UK, has been a fanatic England fan since he watched Bobby Robson’s England side in the 1990 World Cup. Having waxed lyrical about Paul Gascoigne, Gary Lineker and David Platt, he showed From Brazil his red England shirt, with the name Lineker on the back, and his flag.

“The passion of the English fan for his national team is outstanding,” he said. “I expect a great game from England.” Miguel will not have been disappointed by Wayne Rooney’s “surgical strike”. While for even the most patriotic of England fans, the idea of someone from the country of Pelé and Zico glorifying as unglamorous a player as David Platt is, frankly, hilarious. But Miguel is a strangely heartening example of the kind of unlikely surprise football can throw up. Because this is a game that draws out the similarities between people from different nations, while simultaneously celebrating their differences.

Photos Dom Phillips

By Dom Phillips – As Brazilian soccer star Neymar himself says, it has been four years that people are relentlessly asking him if and when he is moving to a club in Europe. And he keeps saying, “I’ll let you know when it happens.” And the rumours keep coming. And he keeps denying them.

Well now they are noisier than ever and this time all the noise seems to be coming from Barcelona. According to the Brazilian press, Santos want to sell him before his contract runs out in July 2014 because they will make a ton of cash from a fine to be paid. After July 2014, Santos would make less.

This week Barcelona upped their offer to 20 million Euros, having already thrown in two friendly matches for Santos against the full Barcelona team including Messi – one in Spain, one in Brazil. Given that Barcelona thrashed Santos 4-0 in the 2011 FIFA Club World Cup final, maybe the Catalans feel they have nothing to worry about

Former Santos great Pelé says Neymar should stay. Daniel Alves, Barcelona’s Brazilian star, said he hopes Neymar accepts a Barcelona offer. “If he comes, it will be a relief, because he is going to help Messi a lot. Two phenomena are better than one,” he said.

Will it all go quiet now until the Confederations Cup in June? Will Real Madrid and Chelsea – who have both been linked to the Santos star – get back in the fray, as Santos seem to hope? Neymar’s father and agent said he did not want Santos auctioning off his son.

Lucas Moura, another young Brazilian star, has seen his football improve, he says, since moving from São Paulo to Paris St German for a rumoured Euros 45 million – more than twice what Barcelona are offering for Neymar. The Brazilian national team needs Neymar at the top of his game for the 2014 World Cup and there are many in Brazil who feel he won’t get there if he doesn’t play at the higher, faster and tougher level that the European league demands.

It’s coming down to the money versus the football. Neymar has a lot of cash tied up in Brazilian sponsorship contracts, which some say run out in 2014. He could even end up worse off financially playing in Europe.

Having seen his team Santos lose the São Paulo state championship to Corinthians, and having not won a major trophy since the 2011 Libertadores triumph, Neymar and his team will also be looking at the bigger picture. Bet all on 2014 and hope Brazil win? And if they lose, how much will he be worth then? Or jump now, with most of a European season to play before the World Cup comes to Brazil.

I suspect we will see a move soon…

Brazil ‘lost’ to Argentina at the Conclave in Rome last week. But São Paulo Cardinal Odilo Scherer will remain a towering figure for the world’s largest congregation.

By Dom Phillips

There was surprise and disappointment here when the white smoke pouring from a Vatican chimney meant a new pope had been chosen – and he wasn’t Brazilian. Cardinal Odilo Scherer, the Archbishop of São Paulo, had been widely tipped as a favourite and was the preferred candidate amongst Brazil’s 123 million Catholics, the largest congregation in the world.

But the cardinals voting in the secretive and archaic ceremony in Rome took everyone by surprise, and chose Cardinal Jorge Mario Bergoglio as Pope. Pope Francis, as he became, is the first South American papal leader. And to the chagrin of many Brazilians, he is Argentinean.

Brazil and Argentina enjoy a fierce, if friendly rivalry, not just in soccer, but in business and economics as well. Jokes focused on this were soon being kicked around Brazil’s garrulous social networks.

Scherer, however, insisted in an interview with Porto Alegre newspaper Zero Hora that he did not even know he was one of the favourites because he did not read the newspapers, and welcomed the new Church leader. On March 14 he put out a video interview on the Archbishop website welcoming the choice of the new pope.

“We are certain that Pope Francis will be a blessing for the Church in the whole world,” he said, noting with approval that Pope Francis is also from Latin America.

What then of the Man Who Was Nearly Pope? The signs are that Cardinal Scherer will continue to be one of the most important church leaders in Brazil. The 63-year-old is lauded here for his adept use of social networks like Twitter – where he has 30,000 followers – and Facebook. But he uses modern communication methods to transmit traditional doctrine: a diplomatic reaffirmation of the Roman Catholic status quo. Plus the odd, light-hearted joke.

“It’s okay that the new pope is Argentinean,” Rebelo said. “But everybody knows that God is Brazilian, and that the World Cup will be ours, for sure.”

Neymar and Bruna are, for now at least, the country’s Posh and Becks, says Dom Phillips. Looks profitable. Let’s see if it lasts. Above, a picture “The New Pelé” instragrammed of her during Carnaval.

By Dom Phillips

“TOGETHER, AT LAST,” read the headline on this week’s edition of Brazilian celebrity weekly Contigo!. “To the delirium of all,” it added inside. Readers might have been expecting an epic love story of Richard Burton-Elizabeth Taylor dimensions. Instead, it was the official ‘coming out’ as a couple of two Brazilian celebrities: soccer whizz Neymar, 21, and soap opera actress Bruna Marquezine, 17, photographed leaving a nightclub in the early hours of Monday morning.

The photos zipped around Brazil with the same nimble-footed agility with which Neymar skips around defenders. The Brazil team might be struggling. But Neymar’s name is on a seemingly unassailable rise: he is currently on the cover of the US’s Time magazine, which describes the Santos FC and Brazil attacker as “the next Pelé“.

The romance had been on for months. Neymar even admitted it on the night of Bruna’s appearance as a carnival queen for the Grande Rio, at the Rio de Janeiro Sambodrome. Both published photos on their Instagram accounts. Bruna with a soft-focus, romantic shot of them together; Neymar adding clapping hands and a smiley face to a photo of her he shared as carnival queen, complete with feathered headdress.

But Contigo! had more detail – and the couple at two parties together. With its tongue firmly wedged in its cheek, the magazine assembled an all-star squad of football metaphors as Neymar scored a “great goal” pulling Bruna; tried to “dribble the press”; “opened his defence” and assumed the romance.

Nor was that the end of it, because Bruna’s family had not given Neymar a “red card” and even went to both his birthday parties – first at his beachside mansion, in Guarujá, near São Paulo. Then, as the couple then went public the next night, at a party for 800 of Neymar’s close, personal friends at a São Paulo nightclub, the footballer spent half an hour singing with the bands on stage while Bruna whooped it up on the dance-floor. No shrinking violets these.

It was leaving the club that the photograph that made everything official was taken: Bruna in a two-tone glittery top and miniskirt ensemble made by Isabella Militão, a young designer in Ceará in the North East; Neymar more casual in white trousers, a black Emporio Armani T-shirt and a giant silver cross, his usual baseball cap backwards.

All this just months after the end of Avenida Brasil, a hugely popular soap opera, one of whose most popular stars was a photogenic and colourful footballer’s wife, called Suelen. Who in turn personified a skimpy, and colourful personal style, – very young, modern Brazil – called piriguete.

Purely coincidentally, Bruna had done a shoot for the Ceará jeans company Fill Sete, wearing denim shorts, and the magazine was invited into her dressing room for its interview. Her look? You might call it ‘piriguete posh’.

Brazil has not, in recent years, had a celebrity pairing like this. And celebrity couples generate headlines like viruses, as the combined star power of both supernovas into something bigger than the sum  of its parts. Think Beyoncé and Jay-Z. Michelle and Barack. Or Gisele Bünchen, because the world’s richest supermodel is considerably more famous in the USA because she is married to one of the country’s top football players, Tom Brady. It’s a win-win situation for all involved.

And then there is the big daddy of all celebrity couples, the marketing mothership that is Brand Beckham. English soccer star David Beckham, now in the twilight of his playing career, has become something of a sporting ambassador for the UK. His wife was formerly known as ‘Posh’, the moody one in the Spice Girls who didn’t sing very much, but has transformed herself into Victoria, a designer and celebrity who hangs out with Hollywood stars. Beckham’s looks have given him endless advertising opportunities. His sense of style, and no doubt his wife’s undoubted fashion nous, have made him a ‘metrosexual’ fashion icon, face of a zillion upmarket brands. And bar the odd kiss n’ tell scandal, their marriage has survived.

Neymar, who already has a son with a former girlfriend, is a Beckham fan. His father and manager told me so in an interview a couple of years ago that Beckham was something of an icon for his son not just as a player, but also as a career model. “He knows what he’s doing. He is a really centred guy. He is an idol for everybody,” the player himself affirmed to me a few months afterwards. Like Beckham, Neymar is keen on personal grooming and his beauty treatments were for a time, a theme in the Brazilian press. He loves clothes and jewellery and spends heavily on them. Brand Beckham has an impressive earning power. Neymar is already making way more from adverts than from his playing. It’s not hard to see where this could be going.

A Brazilian celebrity couple: soap star/samba queen plus soccer ace. Bruna and Neymar. Neymar and Bruna. Brumar. Or better, Neynar. Together, at last.

Just a word of warning for the young couple. Not all celebrity couplings bear such fruit. Katie Perry and Russell Brand have already fizzled out, to the apparent benefit of neither of them. Ben Affleck picked up his Oscar on Sunday for Argo and remembered being there as a confused kid, for the Good Will Hunting screenplay he wrote with Matt Damon, not really knowing what was going on.

Affleck is back on top. And did not mention another confused period in his career, when he dated Jennifer Lopez, they became known as ‘Bennifer’ and made a flop movie together, Gigli. A period when Affleck, according to no less a source than Reuters, “risked becoming a laughing stock”. “It doesn’t matter how you get knocked down in life, cause that’s gonna happen,” said a tearful Affleck, receiving his trophy. “All that matters is that you’ve gotta get up.”

So Neyna, hang on tight and just say no to all movie offers, okay?

This year, the country didn’t deliver on everything international observers thought the country had promised, but Brazil still remains one of the 21st century’s most remarkable success stories. 2013 could be decisive.

For those paying attention to Brazil headlines, 2012 was mostly a bad year. For some, it was enough to re-evaluate the status as an emerging power that the country has euphorically held for years now.

The economy barely grew, and government involvement in the economy has surprised some international investors. The ruling Worker’s Party was dragged through the mud repeatedly as the Supreme Court handed down sentence after sentence for a vote-buying scandal from Lula’s first term. The PCC returned to the scene in São Paulo, and a small-scale war broke out between police and the gang. New laws dismayed environmentalists concerned for the Amazon.

But Brazil still remains one of the most remarkable success stories of the 21st century. This is true for a few simple reasons. 40 million people have risen out of poverty, and inequality has decreased. Despite the slowdown, unemployment is at record lows, and wages have continued to rise. Perhaps most importantly, we saw last week that President Dilma has an eye-popping 78 percent approval rating.

In short, the vast majority of the population support the way the country is being run, people are better off than ever, and society is more just. It’s important to remember that this is the whole point of economic growth and democracy in the first place. The results are there. We shouldn’t confuse means with ends, as is so easy to do when we journalists get caught up in the latest GDP numbers, or scandal.

Even some of the the year’s worst stories have a positive flip-side. As ugly as the corruption trial was, many believe that the tough sentences handed down to high-level politicians could signal an end to political impunity in the country. And despite the tragedy of a spike in violence in São Paulo’s periphery, the state’s murder rate is still much lower than it was a few years ago.

When Brazilians and observers (justifiably) complain about the country at the moment, a little context can be uplifting. What has the world been going through for the last 12 years, especially since 2007? How many countries in the world can you point to with: rising standards of living, reduced inequality, and widespread, long-lasting contentment with leadership? This is certainly not how things feel in my native California, or in Europe. And all of this in an open, liberal democracy? I can’t think of many examples.

But of course, nothing guarantees this will continue, and 2013 could be a decisive year. We can’t expect wages to rise forever without economic growth returning, and so the world will be holding their breath until it does, as expected next year.  But if instead there is more stagnation, or more of what the international community sees as state meddling in the economy, international investors could finally give up and concentrate on countries like Mexico or Colombia. And it’s hard to imagine how the PT would be seen by the people if any of the party’s social gains were reversed.

I personally don’t think either of those doom scenarios will come to pass. We’ll see. But for now, here are some of the bad, the good, and the interesting stories from 2012.

These are summaries – click the links for more in-depth info.

The bad

Corruption –

We watched all year as high-level politician after high-level politician was brought down for the ‘mensalão’ scandal from 2003, and a new hero of the opposition (and anti-corruption movements) was born in the form of Joaquim Barbosa (pictured above).

Violence –

War broke out for the first since 2006 in São Paulo. Again, the major parties were the PCC, the state’s main gang, and the military police. The latter lost over 100 officers to (mostly) targeted executions, while the murder rate in SP jumped.

The economy –

This is the big one. After growing 7.5% in 2010 (and causing us in the international press to rush here), then slowing to 2.7% in 2011, we may not do much better than 1% in 2012. Even more awkward was the moment when Finance Minister Guido Mantega joined the rest of analysts in wildly overestimating third-quarter growth, leading The Economist to call for his dismissal. Needless to say, President Dilma was not pleased to hear this from the British magazine.

But the economy is expected to pick up in 2013, thanks not only in part to the huge cut in interest rates carried out this year, which have finally come down to the levels of a normal country. And in reality, the 7.5% growth year was a statistical blip after -0.3% in crisis-hit 2009. Taken together, the economy had been growing at 3.6% a year, close to the average over the last 20 years, and to what we’re likely to see over the next few years.

But more worrying is that some investors believe, whether rightly or wrongly, that the government has begun to micro-manage the economy and that the possibility of intervention may be unpredictable. Much of this has to do with the decision to lower energy prices. I personally think they’re wrong, or at least that this was a problem of the government’s way of communicating the changes rather than the changes themselves. But some people are on edge, and this is especially important, as a drop in investment is the real culprit for the bad numbers.

And of course, there remains so much that Brazil should and could do to increase productivity and upgrade its growth model.

Infrastructure –

We are still waiting on this one. This is one part of Brazil’s economy that most desperately needs to be resolved, and we’ve still only seen baby steps.

The environment –

My visit to the Amazon this year was not pretty, both because of the persistence of slave labor and the obvious destruction of the rain forest. Things took a turn for the depressing for environmental activists as the government rolled back protections in 2012.

The good

Politics –

Whatever you think of the ruling Worker’s Party (PT), it is undeniable that if you use the standard most often applied to political parties, Lula and Dilma’s have overseen a truly remarkable success story since 2003. Lula left office one of the most popular leaders in the world, and two years into her term, Dilma is already widely supported. 78 per cent approval is a breathtaking figure. And this after everything that happened in 2012.

Despite the mensalão mess, the PT did very well in municipal elections this year, and took back São Paulo, South America’s largest city. If 2014 elections were held today, all polls indicate Dilma would win by a landslide.

And without a doubt, the country plays a much larger role on the world stage than it did in 2002.

The PT, like everyone else, could improve greatly, but widespread support and a rising nation means you are winning, big. This is a tough act to follow.

The real economy –

As I mentioned above, for all the dismal numbers, life on the ground still feels better than ever. Families are still rising out of poverty. The explanation for this is a little complicated, but the reality is there. It can’t last forever like this, of course, but forever hasn’t happened yet.

Justice –

The flip side to the mensalão mess is a justice system which really has teeth for the first time anyone can remember. This has always been the case for the poor, but now politicians can be on the hook, too. This has many hoping they will think twice in the future.

Even some police are being held to account. Some of those that gunned down suspected members of the PCC and, by all accounts, set off this year’s wave of violence, are now in jail.

World Cup preparations –

For years we wondered if Brazil would be ready to host the World Cup. We haven’t sorted out our infrastructure problems, but it looks like at least the stadiums will be ready.

My personal take is the following: The World Cup will go the way Brazil does for most visitors. Something or another will go wrong. They’ll be stuck in traffic, or miss a flight, or end up spending more than they expected on this or that. But those things will be heavily outweighed by the charm of the country and the fun of the event, and most will go home raving about Brazil.

Cost of living –

For us foreigners, it’s been good news that the real has come down significantly this year. Brazil is no longer so maddeningly expensive. For Brazilians, the cost of living hasn’t changed much.

Corinthians –

“The people’s team” from São Paulo took the world club championship, and gave Brazilian football a much-needed boost. This also meant lots of traffic and nonstop fireworks in the city, but overall it was very good for the country, and for South America.

The unexpected and interesting

Lula back on the scene –

I suppose it was more of an anomaly that he was actually gone for a while. But after recovering quickly from cancer, the former president was given a grand welcome back and got to work quickly, helping out in this year’s municipal elections. Crucially, he has so far floated above the mess of the mensalão scandal, and insisting he know nothing of the scheme. We’ll see if he can keep this up in 2013.

Music –

2012 was a much more interesting year musically than 2011, in my opinion. We saw the rise of Brazilian hip hop to the mainstream, “techno brega” from the Amazon in the form of Gaby Amarantos, and funky pop from the likes of Tulipa Ruiz. Here’s our full interview with Emicida, and Criolo’s will be posted next year.

Eike Batista –

He did not have a good year. There was the unfortunate incident with his son, Thor. Then he attracted lots of negative attention, and fell quite dramatically from his position as Brazil’s richest man.

Race –

Hard to categorize this one as good or bad, but the country stared two deep-seated problems in the face this year: relations with indigenous populations, and the government’s approach to black Brazilians.

Tourism –

The sector is doing quite well, but it has nothing to do with the gringos. The sector is almost entirely powered by Brazilians moving around their own country.

The rebirth of the center –

Long more famous for being “Crack land” than anything else, we saw interesting new movements coming up from the street.

Evangelical power –

Much to the dismay of bien-pensant liberals, Brazil’s numerous, and often unsettling, Evangelical Christian churches revealed themselves as an ever more potent political force.

Exhibitionist turn –

We saw Brazil’s sub-celebrity realitytainment industry power into the same bizarre gears we’ve been accustomed to around the world. First, there was the sex, or perhaps rape, transmitted live on Big Brother Brasil. Then we had the young girl who auctioned off her virginity for $800,000.

Petrobras – Graça Foster –

One of South America’s largest companies inherited a true rags-to-riches story as Graça Foster took over. Here’s hoping she can help navigate Petrobras out of its current mess.

Niemeyer –

And finally, we bid a sad farewell to nation-defining visionary architect Oscar Niemeyer, who passed at 104 years old. Here’s an interview I did with him last year, and perhaps next year I’ll post my pictures from his 104^th birthday party.

Here’s hoping 2013 goes better. Happy New Year.

Follow @Vinncent

The ‘people’s team‘ from São Paulo upset Chelsea this morning in Japan and delivered Brazilian football a particularly delicious triumph.

By Dom Phillips

It has been six years since a South American team won the FIFA Club World Cup. But today Corinthians deserved every centimetre of their 1-0 victory, having outplayed Chelsea with a performance that showed the São Paulo team at its very best.

Owned by a Russian billionaire, managed by a Spaniard, with a team stocked by expensive, international players like Spain’s Fernando Torres and Brazil’s Ramires, Chelsea were far and away the favourites.

But Corinthians played with the technique, the skill, the defensive capacity, and most of all the garra – or sheer force of will – that characterises their game at its best. And with a headed goal by Peruvian forward Paulo Guerrero that gave them the trophy, the team have caused a major upset in world football.

At kick-off, it did not look so balanced: Corinthians had struggled to beat Egyptians Al-Ahly 1-0 in the semi final, whereas Chelsea had effortlessly disposed of Mexico’s Monterrey 3-1. Even Corinthians coach Tite had refused to promise victory, saying instead the team would leave fans proud.

This was precisely what they did, taking the game to Chelsea from the beginning, while growing in confidence and stature as the match developed and it became obvious that, yes, the team from London could be beaten. Chelsea threatened time and again. But when the Corinthians defence did falter, goalkeeper Cássio held firm – a goal-line save with his legs was just one of his heart-in-the-mouth, match-saving moments. He deserved his man-of-the-match prize.

This was a tense, but fluid game. But Corinthians kept coming back and kept coming forward. Tite’s advance defence system – in which every player, no matter how far forward he is, has the job to close down the opposition and get the ball back – saw Corinthians winning possession time and time again.

It took them 69 minutes to score as the ball rebounded from the Chelsea goalmouth, out to midfield and back again. In a deft and determined play, Danilo moved laterally across the area to shoot – and Guerrero seized upon the rebound to head the ball home. Even then, Corinthians did not sit back: they defended hard, fought for the ball in midfield, constructed attack after attack, while Chelsea, technically superior, always looked dangerous on the break.

And when the whistle blew, Chelsea looked stunned in defeat. They had not expected to lose. With the game over, the cameras panned over the sour, disbelieving faces of Chelsea’s Frank Lampard and Fernado Torres. “Chelsea fume after world final defeat,” read the Guardian headline.

The victory tops a remarkable year for Corinthians. In December 2011, on the same day that they were mourning the loss of their former captain Sócrates, Corinthians sealed the Brazilian championship. Six months later, after decades of disappointment, the team beat Boca Juniors to win the Libertadores – South America’s Champions League. And now, a hard-fought and, outside of Brazil at least, unexpected victory over European champions Chelsea.

It was all very different a year ago, when the high hopes that Santos would beat Barcelona were crushed 4-0. And it is a victory Brazilian football should be grateful for. Two years away from hosting the World Cup, the Brazilian national team still struggles to find its rhythm and has just been given a new manager: ‘Big Phil’ Scolari. In Brazil, attendances are low and the game even in the country’s top division cannot compare to the pace and finesse of Champions League teams. Corinthians are not celebrated for playing the fluid, creative ‘beautiful game’ Brazil is famous for. But today they gave Brazilian football a much needed shot in the arm.

Because for a team from São Paulo that is largely made up of workmanlike Brazilian league players to go to Japan and beat one of the richest, most famous, and most successful teams in Europe with its multi-million dollar line-up of global talent, is a particularly delicious Brazilian victory.

By Dom Phillips

The game is being scripted as an epic battle: glamorous, strutting Chelsea, Champions League winners, up against the gritty, passionate Corinthians and their army of fans. São Paulo’s so-called ‘team of the people’ finally beat their decades-old jinx and won the South American Libertadores in July. They were also 2011’s Brazilian Champions. A win on Sunday would crown a perfect year for them.

Both teams conquered their trophies with efficient, defensive games. Corinthians then floundered in the Brazilian national league, before rallying back with some recent wins. Chelsea are already out of this year’s Champions League and struggling under unpopular new manager Rafael Benitez. But they are still clearly the favourites

In past years, the trophy has been much more valued by South American teams. But recently the Europeans have won it. Even so, expectations were high before last year’s Club World Cup Final that Santos, where two of Brazil’s brightest talents Neymar and Ganso were playing, could beat the Barcelona team being called one of the greatest of all time. Could Neymar, the one young Brazilian genius not to have left Brazil to dazzle alongside Lionel Messi? Dream on. Santos didn’t even get a look in, losing dismally, 4-0.

I was in São Paulo in December 2005, when São Paulo FC beat Liverpool 1-0 to win the FIFA Club World Cup. The noise of cheering, firecrackers, and car horns blaring reverberated around the city, much to my disappointment. Liverpool is not my team, but it’s pretty much my home city and Brazilian friends took no prisoners in rubbing in the defeat.

Rafael Benitez was Liverpool manager then. But he won the title with Italy’s Inter in 2010. And he’s now in charge of Chelsea – with three of Brazil’s national team in his squad. And he knows exactly what this trophy means to a South American team.

“Maybe in Europe people don’t consider the Club World Cup important. But talk to Brazilians or Mexicans and you will see how they see it. For them, it’s a chance to show the level they’re at against a great European team,” Benitez said recently.

Benitez also has three Brazilian national team players in his squad: midfielders Oscar and Ramires and defender David Luiz. Ramires scored a key goal for Chelsea to take out Barcelona in April on their way to this year’s Champions League victory. Both Oscar, in a deft one-two, and David Luiz, masterly in a rare midfield role, contributed to Chelsea’s 3-1 defeat of Mexico’s Monterrey in Thursday semi-final. Which will have rattled the thousands of Corinthians fans flooding Yokohama’s streets, many of whom watched as Chelsea effortlessly dispensed with the Mexicans.

But this Corinthians team is an efficient soccer machine that coach Tite has crafted over the past year or so, adjusting his system to different players. When the team is playing well as a unit, it is adept at getting the ball back as soon as it loses it, at getting the goals it needs, at hanging on to a lead.

Nevertheless, they struggled to beat Egypt’s Al-Ahly, the African champions, 1-0 in Tuesday’s semi-final with just one goal from their new Peruvian centre-forward Paulo Guerrero – and this despite the army of fans they had dominating the stadium. It is midwinter in Japan and many of the team had never seen snow. Brazilian sports sites are covered in pictures of Corinthians players smothered in giant parkas, scarves and beanie hats, eyes glittering with cold.

But the team has a tradition of putting itself and its supporters through all kinds of cliff-hangers before occasionally pulling out the magic at the last minute. And this stadium has been lucky for another Brazilian team before: Brazil won the 2002 World Cup here, defeating Germany with two goals from the great Ronaldo. Whose last team before retiring, in the twilight of his career, was Corinthians.

The ‘people’s team‘ took the South American cup last night, and the continent’s largest city promptly began setting off more fireworks than most cities in the US did for Independence Day. Our gringo Corinthiano Dom Phillips reports on what it felt like.

By Dom Phillips

The weight of expectation was becoming unbearable even hours before kick off. It was there in the Corinthians shirts that half of São Paulo seemed to be wearing, in the banners celebrating victory in a game yet to be played, in the running battle between police chucking stun bombs at rock-throwing supporters outside the stadium.

The 30 million fans of the famous São Paulo soccer team had decided a week ago that victory in the South America-wide Libertadores trophy, the continent’s equivalent of Europe’s Champions League, was theirs. Their opponents, Buenos Aires’s equally famous Boca Juniors club, were perhaps the only ones who disagreed.

In the end, two second-half goals from the Corinthians number eleven Emerson clinched it. Though it could be argued that Romarinho’s equalizer when Corinthians were trailing 1-0 to Boca in the first game in Buenos Aires was almost as crucial to their final victory – their first ever in the Libertadores.

That first goal followed a cheeky back-flip from Danilo inside the area, which Emerson seized and buried in the net with both verve and velocity. His second was a combination of luck and opportunism: the Corinthians forward stole the ball from a bad Boca pass in Argentine half, out-sped a defender, and slammed home the goal. By this point, the noise in São Paulo’s Pacaembu stadium was deafening, banners were covering half the ground, and Boca were falling to pieces.

The Argentinean team rallied a little. But it was all over. The tears, the exultation, the sense that Corinthians deserved to win a trophy they’d been chasing for decades – not to mention another firework display – were all as expected.

Firecrackers and car horns sounded all night in São Paulo. Fans screamed at each other in the street, hung outside cars blasting hip hop and carioca funk versions of the Corinthians Hymn, or stood wrapped in Corinthians flags, arms outstretched to the sky in celestial thanks. At three in the morning, Corinthians supporters continued to shout and jeer at fans of rival São Paulo FC in one upmarket neighborhood – São Paulo supporters are known as playboys, street slang for the spoiled children of the rich.

Another early hours chant was directed at another of the city’s teams – Palmeiras, who play in green, and were now dubbed ‘Guarani de Pompéia’, a reference to a small team from the interior who also play in green, and the district where Palmeiras traditionally play. Vindication over rival teams who have long taunted Corinthians for never winning the trophy was all part of this delicious victory for fans.

Emerson’s two goals were highlights in the Corinthians Libertadores campaign – because this is not a trophy the team won playing the ‘beautiful game’ that Brazil made famous. Corinthians coach Tite deserves praise for forming a cohesive team that could fight and win this trophy. But not for playing inspiring soccer.

“It was with workers’ sweat that the time arrived in the final,” said the front page of tabloid Diário de S.Paulo on the day of the game. With a picture of defender Alessandro glowering beneath a construction worker’s helmet. Corinthians’ Libertadores triumph was about their determined, organized defence – much like the victory of London’s Chelsea in Europe’s Champions League.

And Chelsea are one of the team’s that Corinthians will meet in December’s FIFA’s Club World Cup in Japan. The line of male supporters in front of me had their T-shirts ready in Corinthians black and white, with a rising sun on black, and the phrase in red: “I go, Tokyo, 6-12-12,” and they put them on when the final whistle blew. Their sense of relief at the title finally conquered was as palpable as the expectation that preceded it.

[Photo above: Corinthians fans take over the iconic Avenida Paulista late into the night]

São Paulo’s gritty Corinthians will take on Boca Juniors of Buenos Aires Wednesday, in a rematch of last week’s thrilling tie. The match, set for 21:50 at São Paulo’s Pacaembu stadium, is the second of the two-part final that will determine the champion of the continent.

By Dom Phillips

One-nil down to Boca Juniors in their gladiatorial La Bombonera stadium in Buenos Aires is not a good place for any team to be. Especially when it’s the final of the Libertadores Cup – South America’s equivalent to Europe’s Champions League. But Corinthians went down 27 minutes into the second half, after a shot by Roncaglia emerged from a goalmouth scramble.

But with the sense of drama that is one of their trademarks, São Paulo’s Corinthians somehow pulled it back with a dazzling and opportunistic goal from 21-year-old substitute Romarinho that silenced La Bombonera. In the 40^th minute of the second half, four minutes after entering the pitch. It was the stuff soccer folklore is made of.

The young hotshot had already scored against twice against São Paulo rivals Palmeiras the previous Saturday. He’s scored three goals in just four games for the team. But it doesn’t get much bigger than a Libertadores final – and now everyone in Brazil knows who he is.

And Corinthians are a team currently lacking a matador, killer, or goalscorer. Instead it is a job divided amongst the team. Consequently Romarinho’s moment didn’t just put Corinthians back in the game, it put the trophy that has eluded the team for the 53 years of the championship’s existence back within reach: with away goals counting double in the event of a draw, 1-1 is not a bad starting point for Wednesday’s decisive second game at São Paulo’s Pacaembu stadium.

But there is still a long, tense 90 minutes to go for Corinthians, in front of a crowd rabid for victory. Nerves could very easily fail them. Boca have a strong team with strikers like Riquelme capable of putting the wind up the home side. History is not on Corinthians’ side: in nine Libertadores games in Brazil since 2000, Boca have only lost one.

And Boca goalkeeper Orion has been stoking the Brazilians’ nerves with provocative talk of a Boca turnaround victory. “Brazilians feel troubled against Argentineans,” he told Fox Sports Monday. “Boca’s statistics weigh heavily. I hope we can continue feeding this.” He added: “We’re going to win and bring home the cup.”

Not if Corinthians can do anything to stop them. This is a team that can feel the hands of football history on their shoulders, along with the weight of expectation of 30 million fans, and the eyes of the whole of Brazil. Whatever happens, it should be one hell of a game. And if all else fails, there’s a 21-year-old substitute called Romarinho on the bench with stars in his eyes.

[photo above: The now-famous Romarinho slips one by Boca and makes a name for himself, last week in Buenos Aires]

Anyone with a feel for Brazilian soccer should tune into Wednesday night’s final: Argentina’s Boca Juniors against São Paulo’s Corinthians. This heavyweight title fight is the first leg in a two-game final to decide the Libertadores South America-wide club competition – the continent’s equivalent of Europe’s Champions League.

All eyes in Brazil will be on Corinthians, the country’s second most popular team, who have never even made the final, never mind actually won the trophy. This is a deeply emotional matter to their 30 million fans. And a cause of great amusement and incessant jibing for everybody else in Brazil.

In 2010, when veteran defender Roberto Carlos joined the great attacker Ronaldo in the team, he promised to win the Libertadores trophy for Corinthians. It looked good. Both were former members of Brazil’s 2002 World Cup winning team. It was Corinthians’ 100th anniversary. But then Corinthians lost 1-0 to Flamengo under torrential April rain in Rio de Janeiro, when the faulty drainage at the Maracanã stadium turned it into an ankle-deep swamp.

Corinthians won 2-1 on the return leg in São Paulo, but as away goals count double in a draw, Flamengo went through. Roberto Carlos left for Russia the following February. The joke had already gone around Brazil: 2010 wasn’t the team’s centenário – or centenary. It was their centenada (nada means nothing in Portuguese).

In 2011, the Corinthians Libertadores campaign got even worse. They team went out in the first phase, 2-0 down to a nobody team from Colombia called Deportes Tolima. The jibing intensified. Ronaldo retired that year.

So this is the closest, then, that Corinthians have ever been. They can smell victory, and they can also remember the bitter taste of defeat. Although the Boca team they face at the Bombonera is not what it once was, Argentine clubs have a good Libertadores record against Brazilian teams. When River Plate, another Buenos Aires team, turned a Corinthians 1-0 home lead into a 3-1 defeat in 2006, furious fans stormed the pitch at the Pacaembu municipal stadium the São Paulo team calls home.

This is pretty much the same Corinthians team with which coach Tite won the Brazilian championship with in December 2011. Some of the players to watch are Emerson, our main forward, Chicão, another veteran defender, Danilo, who scored a crucial goal against Santos, and new goalkeeper star Cássio. But Tite hasn’t got to here by playing the ‘beautiful game’ Brazil was once famous for. Instead he has done it by forming an efficient football machine that is as focused on defence as it is attack, that marks its opposition heavily, and that badly lacks a craque – star, or genius player.

“The whole team has the function of marking, not just the defence system. They begin at the front, making it difficult for the ball to go back and the whole team has this function,” Tite told me in a recent interview.

“Much like Chelsea,” quipped the Flamengo fan on my local newsstand the other day, referring to the mixture of dumb luck and heroic defending that saw London’s most hated club defeat the glorious Barcelona and then beat Bayern Munich to win this year’s Champion’s League. On a smaller, less glamorous scale, perhaps it’s a little like how Corinthians defence faced down the fluid, creative attack of Santos and their star players Neymar and Ganso in their recent Libertadores semi-final.

As a gringo Corinthiano, like most of the club’s fans, I couldn’t care less. I just want them to win. This is a results-based team – and we want a result. Resolute, constant defending is, I have decided, a much neglected art. And anyway, it fits the mood in today’s Brazil, with the economic growth of the last years stalling, and a hard-nosed technocrat like Dilma Rousseff as president, instead of her flamboyant predecessor and mentor Lula.

It’s all about number-crunching and bottom-line in this most capitalist of countries – despite an ostensibly left-wing government. On Monday the giant Brazilian state oil company Petrobras, suffering a falling share price and falling production figures, presented a revised business plan for the next four years to a skeptical audience of analysts.

Its new CEO, another hard-line technocrat called Graça Foster, is a friend and former colleague of Dilma’s, and she laid down the law. Petrobras had for nine years promised unrealistic production targets and failed to meet them. Now it was all about the detail, the projects – and the results.

“Here, nobody works with comfort of absolutely anything,” said Foster sternly from behind her glasses at a press conference afterwards. “Comfort is a word absolutely prohibited between us. We work with total discomfort. Here it is discomfort 365 days a year to attend the demand of all our senhores and senhoras.”

Preparing his team for their Bombonera showdown, and the second leg Wednesday July 4^th in São Paulo, and living under the expectations of 30 million rabid fans, Corinthians coach Tite knows exactly what she means.

Game is Wednesday night, 21.50, Brasília time, played in Buenos Aires and aired on Globo. Second leg Wednesday is July 4^th, at Pacaembu, 21.50. Check online to see where it might be streaming or aired in your country.

[Photo – Emerson at a training session in preparation for the game, in front of the famous Corinthians logo]

Links:
The people’s team
Who is Neymar?

The legions of fans in the outskirts of São Paulo that celebrate and suffer along with Corinthians, arguably Brazil’s toughest soccer team, are maddeningly close to clinching the South American title.

By Dom Phillips

“Hawk steals reporters cell-phone at Corinthians training,” is not a headline sports reporters tend to write. Yesterday one did. The story had everything a sports reporter needed on a slow day: soccer, a girl, an iphone, and a bird of prey – especially as Corinthians biggest organized supporters club is called the Gaviões da Fiel, the Hawks of the Faithful. And the iphone in question was a very lurid pink.

It happened as São Paulo soccer team Corinthians were training on the edge of the city. Press are allowed in to watch. A player is generally put up for a press conference afterwards. As this was the day after Corinthians had won a hard-fought 1-0 victory over rivals Santos in a crucial first-leg semi-final in the South America-wide Libertadores championships, most of Brazil’s news media was represented. I happened to be there too, working on a piece for British soccer magazine 442.

Roberta Gabardo, a reporter for the RedeTV! Network, had put her iphone down for a moment when the hawk appeared and nicked it. Immediately the press and camera crews clustered round, as the bird trotted up and down with a pink cell-phone in its beak, until somebody had the courage to grab it. The next day, it made a story on the uol news site.

At the press conference afterwards, Corinthians goalkeeper Cássio explained that the hawk is a regular visitor to training and the players give it food. I suspect its media career isn’t over yet. It’s a good example of how ravenously Brazilians will consume any news titbit about football – but also of how they like to have fun with it.

While the game is taken deadly seriously, it’s also played for laughs, particularly amongst supporters. Brazilian football banter is quick-witted, cruel, and, much like the hawk who really didn’t want to give up that enticingly-coloured iphone, unrelenting.

My favourite is a visual gag that whizzed around facebook the morning after São Paulo team Palmeiras were slaughtered 6-0 by Coritiba: a photo of a plane in the colours of low-cost airline Gol (Goal), with ‘GOL’ painted six times on on its fuselage in orange instead of the usual one, and a caption suggesting this was the Palmeiras team’s flight home.

I was at the 41^st birthday party the night of the Santos-Corinthians game, which the male host, a santista, or Santos fan, had combined with the match. His living room was evenly divided into two arquibancadas, or terraces for opposing fans, seated either side of the television.

Tension was running high, especially when Corinthians scored an early goal. When a swarm of blacks-shirted Corinthians players buzzed angrily around Santos’s star player Neymar, the santistas began to roar their indignation: “Look! How many of them are there?” A corinthiano roared back: “The Corinthians ants! The Corinthians ants!”

Corinthians, as the tradition goes, are the time do povo (the people’s team), its supporter heartlands the endless cinder block periferia, or poor suburbs, in São Paulo’s Zona Leste, or East Zone. When Brazilian military invaded the lawless Vila Cruzeiro favela in December 2010, TV Globo’s helicopter broadcast memorable images of armed bandits fleeing up a dirt track to safety in a nearby favela. Immediately a screen-grab of the instantly-recognisable swarm of bandits did the facebook rounds, with a Corinthians badge inserted and captions ‘identifying’ fleeing gang members as Corinthians players.

The club’s popularity makes it the one team in São Paulo everybody else loves to hate. Emails for that 41^st birthday party said that the amount of corinthianos attending meant there would be a search on the door. They’re just jealous.

Passionate, diehard Corinthians fans cheer and sing the loudest when Corinthians concede a goal. Their samba drums beat with the most intensity. They might be the second biggest torcida (fan-group) in Brazil with some 30 million, compared to 40 million for Rio’s Flamengo. But they’re certainly the loudest. I was witness when they proved it one Sunday in December last year, when they clinched the Brazilian championship.

That morning, one of their most famous former players, the Brazilian great Sócrates, had died. Sócrates was captain of the legendary Brazil side of 1982. At Corinthians, he had led the Democracia Corinthiana (Corinthians Democracy) movement at the club in the early 1980s which briefly put decisions in the collective hands of all and coincided with the pro-democracy movement that finally ended Brazil’s military dictatorship in 1985.

Before kick-off, players raised one clenched fist in tribute to the gesture that Sócrates and Democracia Corinthiana made famous. Banners depicting his bearded image floated over the ground during the game. After a scrappy draw with Palmeiras left Corinthians champions, the elation and intensity in the stadium was, quite simply, something I’ll never forget.

The club was formed by workers in São Paulo after a visit in 1910 by the famous London amateur football club of the same name and the Romanesque municipal stadium, Pacaembu, where they play is situated in Praça Charles Miller, a square named after the Englishman believed to have introduced soccer to Brazil. All of which made them an obvious choice for a Brit like me to follow. And I’m not the only gringo corinthiano.

Corinthians fans are passionate and diehard. They wear T-shirts in the club colours of black and white with slogans like Louco Por Ti Corinthians (crazy for you Corinthians) and Nunca Vou Te Abandonar Corinthians (I’m never going to abandon you Corinthians). The team has a reputation for creating unnecessary drama: equalising or scoring a winner in the dying seconds of the game, prolonging the agony of their supporters beyond the bearable. The fate of a corinthiano is to ‘suffer’, the fan is a ‘sufferer’. Its players regularly thump the club logo over their hearts.

It’s all about the commitment and the drama, as fans who have supported them all their lives – unlike us gringo pretenders – are wont to explain. And the jokes. The team held doggedly onto that 1-0 lead over Santos until the end of the game, and now just need to draw at Pacaembu next Wednesday in the second leg to reach the final of the Libertadores.

Corinthians have never won the trophy and they want it so bad it hurts. Everybody else wants them to fail. Whatever happens, it will be suffering and drama and jokes right down to the last minute. Who knows, maybe even the Hawk will put in an appearance.

By Dom Phillips in Rio de Janeiro

Who is Neymar? You mean you don’t know? You must be American. He is the Brazilian soccer star who scores brilliant goals with dazzling regularity, and celebrates them with a dizzy teenager’s glee.

The British woke up to his prodigious talents when he bent the ball round hapless defender Gary Caldwell to score an improbable goal at London’s Emirates Stadium last year, in a Brazil vs. Scotland game. Major European clubs like Manchester United and Real Madrid have been chasing Neymar since he was even younger.

As for Brazil, this soccer-obsessed nation has been watching 20-year old Neymar da Silva Santos Júnior for years now. The outrageously talented forward is the star not just of Brazil, but of Santos, a club whose other most famous player was called Pelé (note for Americans: Pelé is often called the greatest soccer player of all time).

Neymar earns an absolute fortune, wears diamond earrings, and has recently flattened his trademark Mohican into a ‘do’ that makes him look like the singer from a late-1980s German heavy metal group. He’s already a father. He likes to have fun. He isn’t just a brilliant footballer, he’s a star – a celebrity whose presence is frequently accompanied by screaming girls and paparazzi. Neymar is money, in every sense of the word.

I interviewed Neymar twice last year. Once, just after training, he was polite and efficient. The second time, during a photo shoot, he was a little cockier. He knows how good he is: he could hardly not, given the accolades delirium with which joyous fans greet every goal. Many in Brazil say he is too arrogant, too successful. How dare a lad from a poor family like this get rich so quickly and not be humble? I didn’t find that. I found a polite, if curt young man with the supreme self-confidence of one who has never failed.

Neymar loves football – the game, the goals, the dance routines after every goal. He has incredible bursts of speed, throws faints, twists and turns that leave defenders flat-footed. He makes it look like the ball is attached to his foot by an invisible piece of elastic, and can turn a game around with a goal, or a pass, or a dribble, to find his way through what seems like an impenetrable line of defenders and score or set up a goal. He’s been accused of ‘diving’ too much to fake fouls. He also gets fouled all the time.

One of his tricks is flipping the ball with his heel over the defender’s head. Another, which Ronaldinho, another great player, also perfected is what’s called the ‘flip flap’, or elástico, in Portuguese. It involves fainting the defender into believing he is going in one direction, then flicking to the other, leaving the defender floundering.

Not only is it effective, it also looks really cool. Brazilians love this stuff: it’s all part of what is called the jogo bonito, the beautiful game, which Brazil, in the course of winning five World Cups, made famous and is now trying to recover. In an increasingly pedestrian Brazilian domestic game, Neymar and the creative Santos team stand out. If you want to see how good he is, watch this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y8viwQTuqGs

Then there’s his goal average, which is as good as it needs to be for a world-class forward. 13 goals in 21 games in last year’s national championship. Six goals in 13 games in last year’s Libertadores, the South America-wide club competition akin to Europe’s Champion’s League, which Santos won. Now this year’s national championship is beginning. And this year’s Libertadores – where Santos are among the favourites – is heating up.

Neymar summed up his success recently in words of rare poetry for a footballer. It is a quintessentially Brazilian comment. “A bola é a mulher mais ciumenta que existe. Se não trata bem, não der carinho, ela vai te prejudicar. E eu a amo muito,” he said.

Before we translate this, a little Portuguese grammar. In Portuguese, there is no ‘it’, no neuter. Everything is ‘he’ or ‘she’. Both ball and woman are feminine. Neymar said: “The ball is the most jealous woman that exists. If you don’t treat her well, don’t give affection, she will harm you. I love her a lot.” The ‘her’, in this context, can be read as both ‘ball’ and ‘woman’. Poetry and emotion. Mad skills and jealousy. Sex and success. Tears, treachery and triumph. Brazilian soccer in its essence.

Add to this money, power and greed. Vast amounts of cash circulate around Neymar, not just in club salary, but in the myriad of lucrative sponsorship and advertising deals. All this before he makes what many in Brazilian football believe is the inevitable, and yet more lucrative, move to a major European club, where the game is tougher, faster, more physical. Where Neymar eventually needs to prove himself, if he wants to be the best in the world. And he does.

Players like Neymar are modern gladiators, competing in a capitalist arena in which they are hailed as much for their earning prowess as their goal-scoring ability. Under relentless scrutiny from a rapacious media and an unforgiving public. It’s not the Emperor’s thumbs-down they fear, but the boos of the crowd and the hiss of failure.

Consequently one of the most enduring images of Neymar is after the 2011 Libertadores final, in which Santos beat Uruguay’s Peñarol 2-1 to win. Neymar scored a beautiful goal. It was his first major trophy, the first real international justification of his phenomenal ability. The cameras zoomed in on him afterwards as the reality sank in, on his knees, bare-chested, arms outstretched to heaven, tears of joy and relief pouring down his cheeks. Live under the television spotlight, the star in a theatre of dreams.

Dom Phillips is a British journalist and writes for The Times of London, Bloomberg World View, The Daily Beast, People Magazine, and British Soccer magazine 442. He has been in Brazil since 2007 and now writes From Rio for the From Brazil Blog. He is the author of Superstar DJs Here We Go (Ebury/Random House 2009).

Soccer fans in Brazil drink beer before and after the game, and are so intensely focused on the action during the 90-minute matches that the current law doesn’t discourage many fans from attending. But FIFA, the soccer authority, makes a lot of money off of beer, and is insisting that Brazil essentially agreed to allow sales when they signed up to host the event in the first place.

FIFA doesn’t write our laws, many in Brasília have been saying. If it comes to that, FIFA will be extremely displeased. But what can they really do?

Yesterday this newspaper broke the story that lawmakers were considering dropping the provision that allowed alcohol in stadiums, since they feared it could be voted down. Today, the government was quick to insist that they would include it in the World Cup bill that will be voted on next week.

But that begs the question – if they almost dropped it, fearing its defeat, does simply loudly proclaiming that it will stay in mean that it will pass?

This matters most to Budweiser, a major sponsor of the 2014 event.

In 2007, when Brazil was trying to win the right to host the World Cup, authorities guaranteed there would be no “legal restrictions” on food and alcohol. It was this agreement that led FIFA General Secretary Jerome Valcke to say earlier this year:

Alcoholic drinks are part of the FIFA World Cup, so we’re going to have them. Excuse me if I sound a bit arrogant but that’s something we won’t negotiate. The fact that we have the right to sell beer has to be a part of the law.

Readers may remember that a little more recently, some Brazilians thought Valcke sounded quite arrogant indeed when he said the country needed “a kick up the backside”, and set off a huge row.

Brazil and FIFA have not been seeing eye to eye on much recently.

FIFA is upset with Brazil about delays in construction of necessary stadiums, the state of infrastructure, roads, airports, security, and safety, as well as a dispute over whether or not students and the elderly should be eligible for half-price tickets to the games. Brazil is upset at FIFA for making such a big deal about everything and trying to mandate how the event will be run, down to the smallest detail, in order to maximize profits.

Fans familiar with sporting events in the US or Europe are often shocked at how little commerce takes place at Brazilian soccer games. At a lot of stadiums, absolutely nothing is on sale but a cheap hot dog and can of soda.

That is because in Brazil, soccer is not just business. It is sacred.

Sports Minister Aldo Rebelo is clearly trying to pressure the Brazilian legislators into approving the pro-alcohol bill by saying today that they basically had to. But it seems a lot of them think they don’t. If they vote it down, then what will FIFA do? Complain more?

Links:
Fifa apologizes, sort of, to Brazil
Brazil World Cup – Please enjoy your staying
Brazil World Cup: trouble brewing

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Ricardo Teixeira, the man responsible for running Brazilian soccer for 22 years, stepped down today, citing health reasons. But Teixeira, who would have organized the 2014 World Cup, has also been facing intense pressure to resign after a new corruption scandal emerged.

Which was the real reason? Quite possibly both were.

But what is certain is that futebol here will be different, as this one man exerted such a strong influence – for both good and bad – on the national sport since taking over as head of the Brazilian Football Federation (CBF) in 1989.

Under his tenure, Brazil won two World Cup titles, in 1994 and 2002, and was granted the rights to host the competition in 2014. But he was also widely accused of corruption and had chilly relations with president Dilma Rousseff.

The most recent scandal was an accusation that he received kickbacks from a company suspected of massively overcharging for a friendly match between Brazil and Portugal in 2008. He took the money in exchange for letting the company rob the Brazilian taxpayer, critics said.

We knew he was sick, and was going to be taking medical leave. But today we found out he was out for good.

“Football in our country is always associated with talent and disorganization,” he said. “When we won, it was thanks to our talent, and when we lost, it came down to a lack of organization,” he wrote in a letter.

Teixeira will be replaced by Jose Maria Marin, a 79-year-old former politician who for our purposes is virtually unknown. He himself may step down in the 2005, a year before the all-important event is to take place.

Recently, FIFA and Brazil have been trading insults as Brazil is clearly behind in certain aspects of preparations for the 2014 World Cup. Teixeira’s many opponents are celebrating today, but it’s far from clear what all of this will actually mean.

Links:

Godfather of Brazilian football in the hot seat
Fifa apologizes, sort of, to Brazil
Brazil World Cup – Please enjoy your staying
Follow @Vinncent

I just got a curious email from a PR, and the obvious intent was to inform me, the journalist, that everything is getting better between FIFA and Brazil. But: 1) the fact that this letter needs sending at all is a problem and 2) it seems like Blatter is saying the same thing General Secretary Jerome Valcke said, but with fancier words.

If you haven’t been paying attention, Valcke told Brazil the country needed “a kick up the backside” to get things going in preparations for the World Cup, setting off a huge diplomatic row and leading Brazil to refuse to deal with Valcke anymore.

This is the letter in full. I have bolded the parts that would make me mad if it was sent to me.

Dear Minister,

First of all, please allow me to express my deepest regret for the present situation. I am gravely concerned about the deterioration in the relationship between FIFA and the Brazilian government, a relationship that has always been characterized by mutual respect, as you rightly point out in your letter of 5 March 2012. In the meantime, you have also received a letter from the FIFA Secretary Jerome Valcke and I have no further comment on this matter other than to say that both as FIFA President and personally, I would like to apologize to all those – above all the Brazilian government and President Dilma Rousseff – who feel that their honor and pride has been injured.

Nevertheless, dear Minister, we should and must work together. We have a common goal – the organization of an extraordinary World Cup in the land of football, in the land of champions. Brazil deserves to host the World Cup and the entire world is looking forward to it. However, the sands of time have been running since 2007. Therefore, let us not waste time on entrenching our positions. Let us instead build something great together, as promised by President Lula during his presidency. I will be travelling in Asia in India, Bangladesh, Bhutan and Nepal until 10 March, and afterwards I would like to meet President Rousseff and yourself as soon as possible – ideally next week.

I trust in your understanding and willingness to arrange such a meeting. Furthermore, I would like to convey to you my utmost respect and also kindly request you to send President Dilma my very best wishes.

Yours sincerely,

 FIFA
Joseph S. Blatter
President

“Brazil deserves to host the World Cup” ? Well, that is just so very, very nice of you to say, Joseph.

Links:
World Cup Planning at a standstill as FIFA and Brazil trade insults (Andrew Downie Blog)
Brazil World Cup – Please enjoy your staying (terrible English on Cup site, from this blog) 
About this blog

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The good news is that Brazil has unveiled a site that allows potential visitors to get to know the host cities for the 2014 World Cup. The bad news is that you must learn another language. No, not Portuguese, but some kind of bizarre English-Portuguese hybrid.

There are some real gems here:

São Paulo: “One of the players that master the halfway line. Leading the main moves of the team”

Brasília: “Headquarter to the Government of Brazil, Brasília leaves nothing to desire when compared to the main metropolises of the world. And if you are seeking for a true great game, there is no better place.”

Salvador: “Cheers the fans with brilliant moves full of swing, typical to its people.”

Cuiabá: “Known for the gold extraction in past centuries, it is now rich in diversity of the Amazonian fauna and flora, and that of Pantanal.”

It goes on like this.

It is a bit too easy for foreign journalists to continually beat up on Brazil for supposedly not being prepared to host either the 2014 World Cup or the 2016 Olympics. With so much time before the events, I think this question often dominates international coverage much more than it should, and I have little doubt that despite whatever problems may arise, both will be great experiences for most everyone involved.

But, as Andrew Downie points out:

Brazil’s Tourism Ministry has a reported annual budget of 180 million reais (around $100 million) to spend on enticing visitors to come to Brazil.

Would it really be that difficult to hire a native English speaker to do the translations?

No. Brazil is not a poor country, nor is it lacking in expertise.

Note to the Brazilian Ministry of Tourism: If you’re looking for an official translator, I’m available. I’m not joking.

Thanks to Andrew Downie’s Brazil Blog for spotting this.

Follow @Vinncent

But this is not the first time Teixeira, the head of the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF), has been on the wrong end of graft allegations. Far from it. But he has always kept his job, usually without needing to actually clear his name.

This time, Folha de S.Paulo reported he’d received kickbacks from a company suspected of massively overcharging for a friendly match between Brazil and Portugal in 2008. The logic is that he may have taken the money in exchange for letting the company rob the Brazilian taxpayer.

Teixeira is also a member of FIFA’s ruling executive committee, and very powerful. We’ll hopefully see soon if this amounts to anything.

Links:
Reuters – Brazil’s Teixeira linked to new scandal
Andrew Downie – The Real Ricardo Teixeira

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