Brazil is divided economically, socially and politically between its two major population centers, the wealthier Southeast and the historically richer Northeast, so much so that prejudice still exists. Far too few appreciate the ways in which the fiercely proud, culturally rich Northeast revels in its uniqueness. 

by James Young

A week after Brazilian football was rocked by the racist abuse of Santos goalkeeper Aranha by Grêmio fans during a game in the south of Brazil, veteran Ceará midfielder Souza wanted to talk about a different type of prejudice after his team were knocked out of the Copa do Brasil by Rio side Botafogo.

“I don’t want to play the victim, but I’m nordestino, [from Brazil’s poor Northeast]. I’ve seen this happen plenty of times. When it comes to the crunch, they always favor the other side and hurt teams from the nordeste. How can I go home and explain this to my kid?” he said, in protest at a number of controversial refereeing decisions made during the game.

It may have only been football, and worse, Brazilian football, where conspiracy theories blossom like flowers in the spring. But Souza had touched upon one of Brazil’s most virulent, though often overlooked, forms of prejudice.

While Brazil’s racial and social divisions are well documented (as in this article by Vincent Bevins), the country’s regional schisms are perhaps less well publicized. But subtle or not so subtle prejudice against those from the northeast of Brazil is a common occurrence.

Football, as it so frequently does in Brazil, provides a convenient illustration of the ills of the country’s society – in this case the lack of respect with which nordestinos are often treated. It is hard to imagine a journalist from a major US or German broadcaster, for example, asking a famous athlete if people from his or her part of the country are “different because they’re funny” and if “it’s their accent that makes the rest of the country think they’re so funny” – as a journalist from the Esporte Interativo channel asked Brazil international Hulk, from the northeastern state of Paraíba, this June.

The roots of Brazil’s regional divisions are historical. There were times in the dim and dusty past when the nordeste was the country’s powerhouse – Salvador was the country’s colonial capital until 1763, while Recife remained a city of major influence until the beginning of the 20^th century. “People like us from the interior of Bahia used to look at Recife like the world looked at Paris,” said MPB legend Caetano Veloso. 

But a number of interrelated factors – among them the decline of the sugar trade (the region’s staple industry), the poverty and social disadvantages of huge swathes of the population, many of whom were descended from freed or escaped slaves, the harsh terrain of the sertão (the parched nordeste backlands), which forced hundreds of thousands to migrate to state capitals ill-prepared for their arrival, the indolence and self-interest of the area’s ruling classes, and a lack of investment by both state and federal governments – brought steady decline.

Now, tragically, the nordeste is best known in Brazil for its poverty, and the region trails the south and south east of the country in every social and economic indicator. A 2012 study by research agency IBGE found that more than half of the 12.9 Brazilian adults who are unable to read or write are nordestinos, while Veja magazine recently stated that the region is home to 52% of Brazilians who claim Bolsa Familia, the Brazilian government’s basic welfare program strongly associated with the ruling Worker’s Party (PT). According to a 2011 study by research agency IBGE, 9.6 million people in the nordeste live below the government’s definition of extreme poverty (U$30 a month). It is such hardship that forced hundreds of thousands of nordestinos to the south and south east, to work in cities such as São Paulo or Rio de Janeiro, where if they were lucky they found a menial job and managed to eke out a basic living, as well as being almost universally nicknamed “paraibanos” – regardless of what state they actually came from.

Even today the more unreconstructed of southerners perpetuate the nordestino stereotype, blaming the people of the region for maintaining the grip on power of the PT of Lula and Dilma Rousseff by voting out of ignorance or under the influence of coronelismo (the abuse of power by wealthy landowners or politicians), and portraying them as toothless, illiterate simpletons. Never was this clearer than in 2010, when a court found São Paulo law student Mayara Petruso guilty of discrimination and sentenced her to community service after she tweeted “Nordestinos aren’t people. Do São Paulo a favor – drown a nordestino!” after Rousseff won the presidential election.

At the same time it is impossible to deny the vivid differences between the south and southeast of Brazil and the northern half of the country, whether it is in terms of climate (whereas Minas Gerais and points south shiver through chilly winters, the nordeste basks in summery temperatures all year round), food (from the acarajé of Bahia to buchada de bode, a backlands dish not unlike the Scottish haggis, though made from the innards of a goat, rather than a sheep), music (such as forró) or accent and dialect (the manioc plant, known as aipim in Rio de Janeiro and mandioca in other parts of Brazil becomes macaxeira in the nordeste).

“From its larger coastal cities, the Northeast can look very like the Southeast,” wrote Peter Robb in his intoxicating interpretation of Brazilian culture and history, A Death In Brazil. “But these appearances deceive. The Northeast is different. The past is present in the Northeast. Rio and São Paulo destroy as they grow, but walk down certain streets in a north-eastern city and you might be in the 1940s. There is the cream painted curved art deco cinema…there are the lean men with hats over their faces, asleep on the tray of a beat up old truck.”

Robb was writing over ten years ago, however, and the nordeste has changed a great deal over that period. While the expansion of Brazil’s welfare state arguably began during the government of Fernando Henrique Cardoso, it was the election of Luis Inácio Lula da Silva, born in the hardscrabble backlands of Pernambuco, as president in 2003 that truly kick-started the region’s transformation. Social support systems such as Bolsa Familia and increases to the minimum wage, together with a number of major infrastructure works included in the PAC (Program of Accelerated Growth) and increased private investment, led to greater prosperity in the region.

Now, while the same social problems remain (a report by the UN Drugs and Crime office earlier this year put six nordestino cities among the 20 most violent urban areas in the world, the nordeste continues to enjoy economic growth that outstrips the rest of the country– in the first five months of 2014, for example, the economy in the region grew by 4%, in contrast to Brazil’s sickly 0.6% growth rate, according to the Brazilian central bank. 

At the same time the area maintains a fiercely independent sense of pride. Never was that better seen than at the funeral of the former governor of Pernambuco, Eduardo Campos, last month, when 160,000 people flooded onto the streets of Recife in mourning. Campos was hugely popular in his home state but overlooked elsewhere, reaching only 8% nationally in the presidential election polls before his death. There had been equal, though not quite so public, lamenting over the death of the great Paraibano playwright and author Ariano Suassuna in July, while a torch still burns in Recife for Chico Science, leader of the band Nação Zumbi and founder of the mangue beat movement, which mixed rock, hip-hop and maracatu, who died in a car crash in Olinda in 1997, aged just 31.

Regional pride is also on vivid display at the nordeste’s massive carnaval celebrations, where Recife, its sister city Olinda, and Salvador, throb to the rhythm of maracatu, frevo and axé, respectively. “I came back to Recife,” goes one carnaval anthem by Alceu Valenca, “it was homesickness that dragged me by the arm.” And the same passion is reflected in the popular support enjoyed by many of the region’s soccer teams, who, due to financial disparity struggle to compete against clubs from the south and south east of Brazil, but still manage to pull in massive crowds – last year two teams, Santa Cruz (Recife) and Sampaio Corrêa (São Luis) were among the top 10 best supported clubs in the country – while playing in Serie C.

“To be Baiano (a native of Bahia) is a state of mind,” wrote the great writer Jorge Amado, one of the state’s most famous sons. In truth though, he could have been talking about anywhere in the nordeste –perhaps Brazil’s most unique, and bewitching, region.

James Young lived in Recife for years and now resides in Belo Horizonte. Follow him on Twitter.

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.

U.S.-Brazil relations are still strained due to allegations of high-level NSA spying and corporate espionage. In the unlikely event that the US team makes a strong showing at the World Cup this year, how would Brazilians respond? Any chances of success hinge on today’s game against Portugal.

Nathan Walters
Rio de Janeiro

I am always surprised when I ask Brazilians which team will win the World Cup, and the answer is not a quick and emphatic “Brazil, of course.” Most weigh the possible outcomes: the usual suspects Holland and Germany can’t be ruled out (just a few days ago Spain was also on the list); Belgium could do something amazing. I always find this strange because whenever anyone asks for my forecast I invariably say “The United States, of course.”

The response is usually greeted with laughter (sometime more than is really called for), and then a short explanation of why this is not possible.

Granted, even the (German) U.S. men’s team coach Jurgen Klinsmann [pictured above] doesn’t think his team can win the Cup. Though this may seem un-American considering US fascination with highly improbable situations, especially when it comes to sports, Klinsmann is probably right.

The team landed in the “Group of Deadliest Deathly Death,” and even if it manages to advance to the final 16, the level of play will only prove more challenging. No problem. U.S. teams are known for miracles, such as the 1980 U.S. men’s hockey team’s Miracle on Ice, and Brazil is a country where miracles are known to happen. The Brazilian economic Miracle of the 1970s is still fresh in the minds of many Brazilians.

So the setting could even be perfect for a legendary upset by the U.S. squad that would most certainly go down in history as the “Miracle at Maracanã” or “Only a Dream in Rio” (with James Taylor intro music opening every ESPN segment analyzing the victory).

After the U.S. men’s team hard-fought Monday night 2-1 win over nemesis Ghana, I found myself thinking more about what a U.S. miracle victory in Brazil might mean for the relations between the two countries.

The U.S. and Brazil have enjoyed a long, stable relationship and the citizens of both countries seem to have traditionally had a high level of interest, if not admiration, for each other. But the relationship has also been riddled by conflict, and recent spying allegations have laid bare some unsettling activities that have helped push the suspicions to a new high and State relations to a new low.

Brazilians have been notoriously fond recently of saying the World Cup is ‘fixed,’ though without any evidence. Some say an easy penalty awarded to Brazil in the opening fueled these suspicions.

If the U.S. were to, say, miraculously win the championship, the victory may not be attributed to skill or even divine intervention but the NSA or the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), the well-known international agency of what is sometimes considered the US “Empire” in Latin America.

Snowden in limbo

Unsurprisingly, considering his previous residency in Hawaii, former NSA contractor/ spy is fearful of another Moscow winter and has made clear his desire to obtain asylum in Brazil. The move would put him closer to Glenn Greenwald, who lives in Rio de Janeiro, and who knows what type of eye-opening revelations could result from the two being neighbors or even roommates (if that is not fodder for a sitcom, I don’t know what is).

Snowden says he is seeking refugee status in Brazil, but so far only a handful of Brazilian politicians have spoken in favor of granting the request. Is it too ridiculous to think a strong US appearance in the World Cup could affect this, for better or worse?

Trade secrets

Last week, Didier Deschamps, the coach of France’s national team, told reporters that a drone had flew over his team’s practice. Soccer espionage? If it was a drone it probably had to be the U.S., or Amazon, or the BBC gathering footage for its World Cup film.

The U.S. is still handling the fallout from accusations of NSA spying on Brazil’s state-controlled energy giant Petrobras and Rousseff.

The revelations, based on documents disclosed by Snowden, rattled U.S.-Brazil relations, prompting Rousseff to cancel her official October 2013 visit to Washington, D.C. Joe Biden made the to Brazil last week to watch the U.S-Ghana match and took the opportunity to pay a visit to Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff. Is was a small step to repair strained relations, one that could be quickly forgotten with a U.S. Cup victory (unless president Obama makes the trips for the final).

Perhaps significantly, Brazil’s Presidential office made no official announcement about the results of the Rousseff-Biden visit.

If the US wants any more attention during this World Cup, however, they’ll have to beat Portugal today.

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.

Things that seemed impossible less than a month ago are now happening every day here in Brazil. In a political Big Bang of swirling movements, causes and new protagonists, a new Brazilian universe is taking shape. Above, protestors in front of Congress, Brasília.

By Claire Rigby

Thousands of column inches have already been written on recent events in Brazil, and more are surely being written as I write these. Nobody could have predicted, on 3 June, the day of the first in the series of protests organized by the Movimento Passe Livre (MPL, Movement for Free Public Transport), that events would take this turn, impelling a political and social Big Bang from which the fall-out is still spiraling, stars colliding and new bodies emerging in the Brazilian sky.

The protests and their aftermath have given rise to a cast of thousands and indeed, millions, in what is perhaps the most profound effect of the unrest: the sudden political protagonism of huge swathes of formerly passive citizens, on the street and on social networks – mainly Facebook. The site has come into its own brilliantly as a public–private forum for discussion and planning, for real-time reporting, and for registering protests, repression, meetings and assemblies in text, film, photos and audio.

Less than a month ago, as noted by Samantha Pearson in yesterday’s FT, two of the main slogans of the multi-sloganed protests, ‘The giant has awoken’ and ‘Vem pra rua‘ – ‘Come to the streets’ – were most famous as straplines for Johnnie Walker and Fiat TV ads, respectively. And even if, in the weeks preceding the slow-building explosion of people onto the streets to demonstrate, hundreds of images and texts were being shared here about the protests and repression in Taksim Square, Istanbul, there was nothing to suggest that Brazil might be next.

Less than a month ago, the Confederations Cup was already looming large, but the idea of there being protests associated with it was nowhere near the agenda. ‘Imagina na Copa‘ (meaning ‘if it’s this bad now, imagine what it will be like in the World Cup’), a catch-all phrase for structural problems large and small, was little more than a collective, anxious fretting over the World Cup, and the likelihood of Brazil’s infrastructure being ready for it. But it is now linked to protests and skirmishes outside the stadiums, and to discontent with what’s perceived as massive over-spending as well as bad planning for the Cup.

As I write this, in the streets of Fortaleza, North-East Brazil, where the Confederations Cup match between Italy and Spain is underway, a ‘sonic cannon’ crowd-control weapon has just been switched on for the first time by police, and protests have turned to tyre-burning on the parts of protestors, and tear-gassing and shooting on the part of the police. Witness this Storify of the days’ events in Fortaleza, which shows protesters with a FIFA GO HOME banner, police firing smoke bombs and teargas, and protesters scattering, their faces covered. One tweet by @KetyDC, whose feed is a tireless, compelling ticker-tape covering protests all over Brazil, reads ‘Palestine? No, Fortaleza. #ProtestoCE #VemPraRua #ChangeBrazil (AFP) ‘.

And in an example of the hundreds of causes spiraling off from or piggy-backing the protest movement and its original demand for a reduction in the cost of public transport, another image on the Storify shows a set of designer-sunglass-wearing, bermuda-shorted young men holding signs reading, ‘Political Reform Now!’ That call for political reform, not a issue in the original protests except, arguably, in the most peripheral way, has been in the mainstream political pipeline for some time now, and its revival has become one of the ways in which Brazil’s government – federal, state and municipal – is scrambling to accommodate (or be seen to accommodate) protestors’ perceived demands.

On 25 June, President Dilma Rousseff announced a five-point plan for change that included public consultation on political reforms. In vintage Brazilian style – the level of bureaucracy in Brazil, for even the simplest piece of business, is daunting – Dilma’s announcement contained half-a-dozen procedural steps to get to the matter at hand: a proposal for ‘a debate over the convening of a plebiscite to authorize the functioning of a constituent process to carry out the reform’.

The ‘debate’ on that lasted less than 24 hours, and Dilma, along with the rest of government, is now looking at simply calling a plebiscite on reform. (The political reform in question is twofold, covering the way elections should be funded [Dilma’s party, the PT, wants them to be publicly rather than privately funded], and whether the currently proportional voting system should be changed to voting on the basis of districts [the PT, a relatively small party, would prefer it to stay as it is].)

Who’s who

As for the sunglass-wearing protestors in the Storify, they’re an example of the multiplicity of actors now onstage all over Brazil, on the streets and online, making their voices heard. A battery of assemblies, meetings, demos and street battles is going off on all sides, in city centres and across their peripheries, in an atmosphere in which working out who is who has become almost comically difficult at times. On Tuesday night, I attended a public assembly about the democratization of the media, held underneath the looming hulk of the MASP museum on São Paulo’s Avenida Paulista. As a speaker was proposing ‘agrarian reform of the airwaves’, a march approached along the avenue, and drawing level, stopped. The two groups regarded each other with a mix of curiosity and suspicion for a few moments, trying to get the measure of one another.

‘Vem pra rua!’ called the marchers, unsure what kind of assembly they had stumbled upon. The assemblists regarded them silently, sizing up the placards, noticing the Brazilian flag around one pair of shoulders, wondering. Eventually, with an expression of solidarity, the speaker holding the microphone deftly sent them on their way, albeit a little uncertainly, and picked up where he’d left off.

The confusion is understandable: lots of things aren’t what they seem, and others seem not to be what they are. Some young men in Occupy-style Guy Fawkes masks turn out to be rightist agitators, hurling abuse at left-wing parties on 20 June, when a PT march was routed from Avenida Paulista. A photo of an unlikely burly, white-shirted and masked rioter who stood out from the crowd, piling in at São Paulo’s City Hall and smashing at the door, was suspected by protestors of being an infiltrator and a provocateur, but turned out to be an over-enthusiastic architecture student. A ‘General Strike’ event on Facebook, since removed, with at least 700,000 confirmed attendees, was found to have been called not by workers’ movements, but created by a single person: a man named Felipe Chamone, an amateur marksman who appeared photographed bearing a gun, triggering a counter-event on Facebook, ‘Denouncement of the General Strike event‘. Even more confusingly, a group of unions now apparently has called a general strike, for 11 July… 

‘Think hard,’ reads the page urging people not to join the General Strike event, ‘before you join any event related to the protests, even if your participation is only symbolic or virtual. Make yourself aware of who is responsible for the initiative, and whether it aligns with your convictions.’ Given that less than a month ago, out of the hundreds of thousands of people who have now taken part in the protests, many would have displayed little reaction to news of a protest other than a loud tut at the disruption to traffic, it’s to be hoped that the habit of critical thinking, developed during these first weeks of the movement, will persist.

For now, as various strains of conservatism scramble to contain, co-opt, appease and control what parts of the movement they can, the Movement for Free Public Transport (MPL), having met with Dilma this week (and having declared her to have a woeful lack of knowledge about transport), is moving onto its own real agenda. Hint: the clue’s in the group’s name, and in its slogan, ‘For a life without turnstiles’. Having achieved the 20¢ reduction in bus fares it took to the streets for at the start of June, the MPL is continuing to campaign for universal free public transport, a gateway right, its activists claim, without which many other rights – to hospital treatment, to education, to culture – are impossible for people to exercise.

Walk this way

In an open letter to Dilma in advance of its meeting with her this week, the MPL wrote about a range of other issues beyond transport, including the militarization of the police, the plight of Brazil’s indigenous peoples, and the ongoing repression and criminalization of social movements. It might be a logical progression, too, for an overtly anti-car current to emerge in or around the MPL. There’s no apparent sign of it yet (though the MPL’s open letter refers to an eleven-times greater public investment in individual than in public transport).

But given a set of factors, in São Paulo at least, that include chronic traffic gridlock, a vocal cycling activist lobby, a horrifying death toll annually on the roads, and the sharp focus on transport nationwide, a serious critique of cars and car culture would be an interesting development, to say the least. Coming in the wake of growing demands and actions here in São Paulo for people to ‘occupy the streets’ together, in the form of festivals, demonstrations and other events, the wave of recent protests managed to sweep cars from the picture effortlessly, banishing them from the scene in a single stroke and filling the streets with throngs of people, walking in unison.

There’s even a ready-made slogan, crying out to be appropriated – it’s the punchline of that Johnnie Walker TV ad: Keep Walking, Brazil.

Follow @claire_rigby on Twitter

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

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

Follow @Vinncent

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) 
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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.

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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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