Brazil’s 1970 Campaign

The 1970’s worlds cup

All about probably the best campaign ever in a world cup.

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Lost Samba – Chapter 06/03 – The heyday of the Maracanã.

Photo by Bernardo Mello Franco

Rio de Janeiro became the undisputed capital of world football. Needless to say, the players of the national squad became super-heroes for kids of my generation, and playing football was an absolute must for all of us. Supporting a team was also an essential part of the package. I opted for Botafogo, because it was the neighbourhood where I was born and because of its cool emblem: a five-pointed, white star on a black shield resembling Captain America’s. My team was among Rio’s “big four”, competing alongside Flamengo – the team of the masses, Fluminense – the team of the rich, and Vasco – the team of the Portuguese community and their descendants. Botafogo was the odd one out and attracted those who somehow did not fit in any firm social category. The opposition would say that this was the team for the weirdos.

If only for a moment, football produced the magic spell that every totalitarian government longs for: it brought people together as equals. For me this worked; football was the best way to fit into a country that was completely alien to my parents and I took on this mission with absolute conviction. Whenever I could, I would stay in my room following the football championships on the radio, which was altogether far more fun than anything else that went on within the confines of our apartment. Radio Globo’s presenters were funny, clever, eccentric and over the top. When a player managed a great trick, the commentators, Jorge Curi and Waldir Amaral, went wild; when a player scored, they became orgasmic. Mario Vianna, the comentator for the referee’s decisions, would shout “Errou!!!” for mistakes, “La mano!!!, Cadê o echo?? La mano ôo ôo ôo!!!” for an apparent handball, “Banheiiiiira!!!” – Bathtub!!! – for an offside, and, on for penalties, he would make a solemn comment before offering his verdict: “Penalidade maxima”. After a match, it was time for João Saldanha. His considered, hour-long post-match analysis employed allegories of known and made-up folk tales, involving metaphors such as giraffes dating monkeys and elephants marrying ants. He was never boring..

Rio’s four big teams

These characters made mini transistor radios an essential gadget for football fans who, even in the Maracanã, held them closely to their ears. During important matches, there were so many that, providing there was a silent moment, all the fans could hear the station’s jingle echo loudly throughout the stadium.

With Brazil’s heightened international status, the two tournaments that the carioca teams participated in – the state’s one in the first half of the year, and the national one in the second half of the year – acquired a special flavour. Rio’s league was only rivalled by São Paulo’s and, as the commentators Waldir Amaral and Jorge Curi liked to say, here was the three-times world champion football being played at the biggest – and greatest – venue on the planet. I was dying to watch a match in the Maracanã. All the other boys who I knew had already gone – or at least they claimed that they had – and I badly needed the kudos. As ever, the obstacle was Mum and Dad’s irritating attitude of “What I don’t know, I don’t like”. Coming from Britain, for them football was for the working class and for the local riff-raff. Going to a stadium and mixing with those types would somehow be a blot on their social position.

My fate changed on the day that Peter, one of Dad’s friends, offered to take me to a match together with his two sons. He was the adventurer of my parents’ social circles: he had crossed Latin America in an old jeep, he smoked, he was toned and suntanned and spoke English with an American accent.

Peter and his two sons, Rob and Tony, came to pick me up in their jeep early on a Sunday afternoon. They were older and supported Fluminense – which was not ideal for a Botagoguense – but the game was against Flamengo, everyone’s arch-rival. This would make it OK to shout “Nense!!! Nense!!! Nense!!!” instead of “Fogo!!! Fogo!!! Fogo!!!”. At first I felt uncomfortable in the car, the two older boys kept on talking about electronics, mechanics and other subjects that were alien to my existence. However, the further we travelled, the more apparent it became that all the traffic was heading to the stadium and I forgot the feeling of being left out. The other cars were filled with Flamengo or Fluminense supporters who would make fun or cheer each other from the car windows. Surely their radio sets were tuned into the same station as us, we were one of the guys!

We arrived about one hour before kick-off time. While Peter negotiated the parking fee with a car “minder” – who would, of course, not be there when we came back, I stepped out to look around. The atmosphere was frantic: people, very few of them from the Zona Sul, were heading towards the stadium. The Maracanã was at least three blocks away but even so, it looked colossal; the batucadas and the cheering coming from inside were loud, and appeared to be attracting the crowd like a butcher’s light attracts flies.

Seat reservations were unheard of – everyone had to queue at ticket booths. Rusty bars separated the ticket vendors from the public and while we waited for our turn, beggars and drunkards came to bother us. Further away, improvised stand owners shouted their lungs out trying to sell their stock of flags, mats to sit on and team shirts to the fans rushing by. After getting our admission, the next step was to make our way into the stadium. This was no simple matter. There were only two gates for our tickets, one on either side of the Maracanã. The mass gathered in front of them and funnelled in like sand passing through an egg timer. The mood was tense and filled with testosterone; this was not a place for women, children or the elderly. Amidst the pushing crowd, I clung to Peter’s eldest son’s shirt and had to be careful not to fall down and risk having hundreds of anxious feet trampling me.

The turnstiles were a surreal oasis of peace separating the madness outside the stadium from the one inside it. Before passing through the turnstiles, frail middle age clerks, guarded by fearsome-looking bouncers, carefully inspected the tickets one by one. Those without a legitimate one – or those trying to sneak in without any – had to choose between turning back and pushing their way through the on-coming mob or being escorted to the police station. I could tell that the inspectors had little patience and no sympathy, as one of them was yelling at one of those trying to smuggle themselves in “Who cares if you have no money!? For f..ck sake! Decide fast! Can’t you see the people behind you?”

When our turn came, the grey haired mulato in glasses examined our admissions, tore the thin blue papers, threw his half in a bin and loosened the turnstile to allow us in. We regrouped and ran with the crowd up the wide ramp that lead to the upper ring. Police officers with ferocious dogs grabbed hold of drunkards and people carrying dangerous objects. At the end of the ramp, the fans separated according to their team loyalties and there were no further risks of fights breaking out between rival supporters. We followed the Fluminense fans and took the left corridor, rushed past the toilet doors and the half-empty bars, the mixture of urine and spilled beer producing a sickening smell. There were entrances every thirty meters, and Peter had to decide quickly which one to choose.

He pushed us into one of the narrow corridors where shadows obscured the light at the far end. We ran up feeling the immense energy emanate from the crowd. When we finally entered into the arena, I was in awe: the stadium was gigantic – I could well-understand how it could take a hundred and sixty thousand spectators. Down below, encircled by the oval construction dressed with all the paraphernalia necessary for the spectacle, with advertising and fan’s banners hanging from the balconies, was the green and impeccably maintained football field that captured the dreams of an entire nation.
In the crowd, the areas around the supporters’ associations were the most fun. Those were the places where the most fanatic fans stood, where the batucadas happened and from where all the booing and the cheering originated. When one of them started, moments later – as in a chemical reaction –tens of thousands of people would be shouting out the same message. The problem was that it was also there where most of the fighting broke out. That was a bad choice for Peter to take three children and, perhaps wisely, he ushered us to the boring neutral zone between the two sides.

As we found a place for four people, there was a preliminary match going on between the juniors from both clubs. Although everyone was more concerned about the main event, there were cheers and the tempo of the drums went up when one of the future professionals scored. Also, things went silent when one of them was about to take a penalty. When the match finished, the stadium woke up. It was already completely full, and supporters began waving their super-sized flags, releasing balloons with their teams’ colours and setting off firecrackers. The samba and the chanting and counter-chanting also heated up. Down on the field, photographers with several cameras and long lenses hanging on their necks, and reporters with oversized microphones and headphones, ran to take their positions behind the goal posts. The uniformed gandulas, or ballboys, sat around the field while policemen with dark glasses and German Shepherd dogs patrolled the aisles and periphery of the field. Now only the players were missing.

The fans sang the same rude tunes that we taught each other at school and threw crushed empty paper cups onto the heads below. The worst thing I remember seeing were guys peeing down onto the lower stands where the poorer fans went. They called that section the geral; it was the cheapest place in the stadium and was certainly a place to avoid. The spectators there watched the game standing up with their field of vision at the same level as the player’s feet amidst gang fights that broke out regularly.

A friend told me the story of a reporter who was in one of the press cabins that hung over the geral. In order to amuse himself, the reporter started shouting out obscenities at them, in the middle of his rant his false teeth fell out and landed on the ground right below him. Despite his pleadings, they trampled his teeth as soon as they hit the floor.

*

A surprisingly monotone and formal voice sounded out of the loudspeakers announcing the match and reading out the players’ names. The electronic panel was turned on and began to display the “Flamengo 0 and Fluminense 0” score line.
Because it was the team of the white social elite, Fluminense’s symbol was rice flour. In preparation for the team’s entrance, members of its torcida, or fans association, walked around with buckets full of sachets of the stuff, distributing them like farmers throwing feed to animals. As soon as Fluminense came onto the field, the fans opened the sachets and threw the powder up into the air creating a thick, white cloud. When the air cleared, it looked as if the supporters had just come out of a dust storm.

Flamengo’s torcida was bigger than Fluminense’s, covering almost two-thirds of the stadium. The club’s symbol was a vulture due to its colours: red and black. For every match, supporters brought in a real vulture – the tradition was to attach a flag to its feet and release the bird as the players came onto the field. If their mascot flew out of the stadium, they considered this a good omen. At this particular game, the confused creature ran the risk of changing colour because of the cloud of rice powder, and of being mistaken for a white eagle when it returned to its nest.

The two teams walked onto the field together, the referee with his auxiliaries opened their way and the teams’ young mascots came right after. They were free to run around after their squads posed for the press photographers. The next morning those images would be on the back pages of every newspaper in the city and whoever had been in the stadium would feel as if they had taken part of a major event. As the players warmed up reporters ran around the stars in the field trying to get them to comment on the stories they had been working on; now we could actually recognise the owners of the voices that we had been following since we left home.

Once the field was clear, the referee called the two captains to the centre of the pitch to choose who would kick-off the match and on which ends of the field the teams would start. The players took their positions, the referee whistled, and a celebrity player gave the first pass. The match had begun and the tension grew higher. Some of the players had been world champions in Mexico and the fans could recognize them from their haircuts, the numbers on their shirts and their style of play. When they did something wrong, people criticised them loudly as if they knew them personally. When attackers were close to scoring, everyone stood up, and when the opposition did something threatening, they kept silent while the opposing fans cheered. In the second half, Fluminense scored and although I did not support them, I could not contain myself and went crazy as if I was one of them.

Back then, Brazilian clubs did not sell their stars abroad and television was still in its infancy. Our football heroes did not have agents planning golden careers for them in European leagues. Instead, horizons began and ended with the state and national leagues and, for the very best, selection to the national team. They played for the torcida and did what they could every Sunday afternoon to confirm their status as craques, or football idols, not for television viewers or for foreign scouts, but for those present at the stadiums. Therefore, the there and then that was crucial, and this made the quality of those games not just world class, but the best in the world. The Maracanã of that era holds special memories for Rio’s football fans, rather as Woodstock does for rock lovers. There were moments of absolute magic, unforgettable goals, tricks and plays, and outlandish crowd deliria. As in the colliseum in Rome, the aura in those matches is an unrepeatable phenomenon.

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Lost Samba – Chapter 06/02 – Brazil’s football triumph in 1970

The first game of the 1970 tournament was between the Soviet Union and Mexico, which my family watched in Paulo’s flat. To my relief we had a place to see the games. Despite being a dedicated left-winger, Paulo belonged to the twentieth century and owned a television set, despite the fascist propaganda, as he saw it, that set continuously spewed out. The fans dismissed both these teams as minor football potentates and we were only interested in the opening ceremony. From our vantage point, however, the situation was a bit different: Paulo was supporting the team with the inscription “CCCP” – the USSR – on their tops. The presenter called the team “Russia”, mentioning them as little as possible, which provoked a few grunts from our friendly-faced host.

Brazil played its first game a couple of days later. It was at night and on a weekday, too late and too awkward to watch at Paulo’s place. However, my parents allowed me to listen to it on the radio during dinner, ignoring my sister’s protestations. To the shock of Brazilians throughout the land, Czechoslovakia scored the first goal. The commentator’s dry words fell as a knife into the nation’s chest and outside there was a silence as though the end of the world had arrived. Sarah made the mistake of laughing at my anguish so I hurled a chicken thigh at her face and Dad sent me to my room. At least there, I could hear the game with no interruptions. Soon after, to everyone’s relief, Brazil scored and went on to win by four to one.

The next game had a greater significance to my family. Brazil’s adversary was England, the reigning world champion, and everybody kept asking my parents where they stood. Whom were they supporting? What would the result be? What did they think of the English players? How did Pelé compare to Bobby Charlton? Although neither of my parents knew any of the answers and in truth were wholly disdainful of football, there were enough reasons for us all to watch it. The Brazilians were about to challenge the British pose of world champions. Moreover, by coincidence, the referee was going to be the Israeli Avraham Klein: our surname!

The awaited game was on a sunny Sunday afternoon. From the early hours the bangs from occasional firecrackers were like church bells reminding Rio de Janeiro that this was a special day. Since I had woken up, Radio Globo, my indispensable source of football-related news, had been busy stirring-up the excitement. On the days that the national team played, Radio Globo suspended its regular schedule of programmes. The presenters spoke about nothing else and every now and then they interrupted whatever they were saying for live broadcasts of reporters who had managed to grab a piece of news from Mexico.

As usual, we went to the Paissandú Club at around 10 am. Caught up in the atmosphere, I put on my canary yellow shirt and, as the car emerged from the garage, I opened the car window and waved my giant yellow and green flag that I’d tied to a broomstick. Whenever we passed someone with the same shirt, I shook my fists outside the car and shouted out, “Brasil!!!”, and the responses echoed back with the same euphoria.

Arriving at the club, to my shock I immediately noticed perhaps the only Union Jack flag to be flying anywhere in Rio de Janeiro. It was hanging from a palm tree above a group of pale, middle-aged men drinking whiskey at the poolside. The other boys, the service staff, and I mumbled to each other comments questioning those Brits’ masculinity as well as the virtues of their mothers.

Some of us interrupted listening to the radio to take a dip in the pool, but did not stay long in the water. Instead, we massed around the lifeguard’s radio like a swarm of bees, falling silent whenever a reporter managed to interview one of our players. Around lunchtime, the increase in the number of fireworks going off across the city indicated that kick-off time was approaching. Television started transmitting live from Guadalajara and the streets emptied.

In order to catch the beginning of the game, we had an early lunch in the club’s restaurant. On our way to Paulo’s flat, we passed crowds of people gathering in front of the windows of electrical goods shops to watch the game on the TV sets that they had left on for the occasion. Almost all of these spectators held tightly a mini-transistor radio to their ears, much as people attach themselves to mobile phones today. I managed to convince mum to put the car radio on to Radio Globo so that I could hear what João Saldanha, now a commentator, was saying about the imminent game. As his slow and deep voice came on, I forgot the flag and concentrated on every word every word he said.

Paulo lived in a modest flat in front of our butcher and next to the bus stop on Avenida Barata Ribeiro. We arrived ten minutes before the game. The television was already on and we settled down in time to watch the players entering the stadium, stand in line and sing the national anthem. Soon after, the referee blew the whistle and the game started. The names of players who would soon belong to the world’s football pantheon resonated in the nervous silence: “Jair to Pelé, Pelé with the ball, to Tostão…. Gerson…. to Rivelino”. In Copacabana, every citizen was performing his or her duty of supporting their national team. The game shut out the rest of the world. The streets were completely empty: shops, police stations, hospitals, fire stations – everything was closed. If you were to have a heart attack, if your flat was to catch fire or if you were about to give birth, it was just your tough luck!

The beginning was somewhat nervous and boring. Zagallo used the tactic of holding his team back in the first half to then try to liquidate the adversary in the second half, trusting in his players’ greater fitness and in their natural Brazilian flair. However, nothing was guaranteed. Everyone was tense and the opposition was tough. In the second half, the heat had taken its toll on the English team and exhaustion was setting in. Their goalkeeper, Gordon Banks, was doing miracles to keep the match scoreless. We could sense that Brazil was about to mark a goal – it was simply a question of when and not if, but the wait was agonising. The excitement drew in even Dad and Paulo, and by now they were silent and fully concentrated. When the Brazilian attack finally broke through the English defence and Jairzinho scored, no Brazilian could contain his or her emotions and there were primeval screams in every home.

Of course I went berserk to the amusement of the adults – everyone in the room but me. We could hear the madness outside but the atmosphere in Paulo’s flat was very different. Mum was not supporting Brazil and despite her being in her fifties, she was the youngest grown up in the room.  As soon as the game was over and the television transmissions returned to the studios in Rio de Janeiro, they all went back to serious topics – mainly Israel. I took advantage of having the TV entirely for myself, picked up the bowl of cookies, took a coke out of the fridge and switched over to Tarzan.  My parents stayed waiting for the “savages”, whose shows of excitement had boiled over into the streets, to calm down before going home. As Brazil progressed through the tournament, celebrations lasted longer and the samba became wilder.

In the Cup final, Brazil beat Italy four to one, in one of the most famous games in football history. The campaign ended with Pelé setting up Carlos Alberto for a cinematographic shot from outside the goal area into the back of the Italian net.  That convincing triggered a national catharsis that allowed the whole country to temporarily set aside its political differences and social problems. As this was the country’s third World Cup, the Jules Rimmet Cup came to Brazil for good, which sealed the glory. The victory also meant a success for the military’s PR machine. The relentless propaganda was successful in tying the regime’s image to that triumph and in injecting the country with nationalistic fervour. Now the regime felt legitimized to tighten their political grip on Brazil.

No one noticed that this was the way that the golden days of Copacabana found to say goodbye in a grandiose fashion. Within a few years, the beach side neighbourhood’s glamour would fade. People from alien social circles would replace the elite of Rio de Janeiro in its Hollywood style buildings. The upper class would move to the neighbouring up-market areas of Ipanema and Leblon, and even further south to São Conrado and Barra da Tijuca. Meanwhile, at night, the Avenida Atlantica would become the world’s biggest open-air brothel.

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Celebrations in Copacabana for the 1970’s Word Cup Championship.

Lost Samba Chapter 06/01 – Football passion in Brazil’s golden days

The year of 1962 was not only the year I was born, it was also the year that the Rolling Stones and the Beatles recorded their first singles, that Fidel Castro was excommunicated by Pope John XXIII, that Adolf Eichmann, the engineer of the holocaust, was executed in Israel, that João Gilberto and Tom Jobim made their American début at New York’s Carnegie Hall, and that Marilyn Monroe died of a drugs overdose.

For Brazil, what marked that year was its second ever World Cup victory. If winning a World Cup electrified “developed” countries, such as Italy, Germany and England, it is hard to imagine the explosion of excitement and sheer joy that Rio de Janeiro experienced. From the shacks in the favelas to the luxury apartments in the Zona Sul, everyone’s ears were firmly glued to their radios, anxiously following the tournament’s final between Brazil and Czechoslovakia. Every move in Chile’s National Stadium produced waves of nervous excitement in every corner of Rio and every goal that Brazil scored triggered a collective delirium.

After the final whistle sealed Brazil’s three to one victory, celebrations took to the streets, continuing into the small hours of the morning. As always the  batucadas, or samba drummings, were the soul of the spontaneous out-of-season carnivals. This unmistakable beat was based on three instruments: the surdo, a large bass drum that marked the rhythm; the caixa, a type of snare drum; and the tamborim, a tiny, shallow, drum that made a loud cracking sound and that was used to lead the music.

The musicians came down from the favelas to show the “asphalt” that the streets also belonged to them and declaring that they were the kings of samba. In their entourage were caramel coloured girls, or mulatas, who shook their magnificent bodies to the rhythm, exposing almost everything long before the appearance of the Brazilian-style bikini. As the celebrations took off, the crowds pushed aside political and social differences and only thought about the goals scored by their football heroes – Garrincha, Didi, Vava and so many others. In their celebratory delirium their hearts only cared about singing their joy out in carnival songs that they all loved and who knows, meeting someone special amidst the partying.

Spontaneous street celebrations.

Eight years later, in 1970, after the disappointing and unimpressive campaign of 1966, Brazil was on its way to Mexico to attempt its third World Cup title. Thanks to television, the entire nation could now actually see their team play live, and, with the help of this new medium, the military regime invested heavily in fermenting a fever of patriotism around football that engulfed the country.

Some villages received their first television set in order to allow their people to watch the tournament. The villagers gathered around these single sets, often in unpaved squares in the middle of the jungle, to become part of the “90 million in action”, as went the team’s official song. Throughout the country, almost every car had a yellow and green ribbon tied to its antenna and every establishment bore at least a flag or a poster of a favourite player, or of the whole team, affixed to a wall. Our street was no exception and joined in the commotion. Residents hung flags from their windows and the more exalted took their time to spread hundreds of small paper banners on wires that they set up crossing from one side of the road to the other.

While at every possible opportunity the media spread pro-regime messages and there were stickers everywhere proclaiming slogans like “Brazil: Love it or leave it” and “God is Brazilian”, few people realized that the team’s coach, João Saldanha, was a committed communist who held meetings of the illegal party in his house. After Saldanha refused to select one of President Medici’s favourite players, Dario – Dadá Maravilha – for his team, and making inconvenient political statements while inspecting the stadia in Mexico, the governing generals ordered that Zagallo, a former star player who had participated in the victorious campaigns of 1958 and 1962, replace the coach.

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Brazil, love it or leave it; a message to the opposition.

National fever: Scrapbook with Brazil’s 1970’s team

Brazil vs Spain: a football showdown.

Tomorrow’s game is an important showdown for many football lovers. For some if Spain beats Brazil in the epicenter of Brazilian football passion, the Maracana, it be like the passing of the  crown of world football dominance from Brazil to Spain. For others, if Brazil wins the match it will signify  the coming of age of the Neymar generation where they will stop being a promise for the future and will become part of the Brazilian pantheon of football legends.

For the coach Felipao, or Big Phill, who has been in charge of this Brazil team for a little more than a month this will not be the ultimate test. He is a pragmatic man who is still building the team, his aim is winning the World Cup next year, not the Confederations Cup. When he won the World Cup in 2002 with Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Roberto Carlos, Rivaldo et Cie, his team had been appalling in the qualifying stages and he attracted a lot of enmity by not calling up Romario, the country’s top scorer at the time.

For the Spaniards the game will mean a lot, it is the jewel that is missing in this amazing team’s crown, They have won the European Cup, the World Cup but not the Confederations one, and more importantly they have never beaten Brazil especially, and doing this in a world class final in the Maracana will be something that they hunger for. They want to brush off the questions regarding Brazil’s football superiority,

Despite Big Phill’s pragmatism, the Brazilians will also want to win, loosing a final in Brazil’s major football temple in front of a gigantic crowd would be a disgrace they would not want to live with, neither the players nor the coach. With players who are still seeking international consecration there is the added stimulus of ranking upgrade.

As for the game, Brazil and Spain have shown themselves similar in one aspect, they have “on” and “off” modes. When they are “off” they are vulnerable, nervous and make mistakes like any other team but when they are “on” they are unstoppable. The Spanish team has been playing together for longer and technically they are superior:  more disciplined, more uniform in their talent and more seasoned in big competitions. But they have the disadvantage of coming from an exhausting game against Italy and many of the players will have the fear of facing the Brazilian yellow top in a competition.

As for our predictions; we think that Brazil’s “on” mode is wilder, less predictable and more creative which allied with the unique atmosphere of the Maracana will give Brazil the advantage. Brazil will win.

Garrincha, Torquato Neto and the Brazilian memory

Garrincha and Torquato Neto: there are many differences and many similarities between these two great stars in the Brazilian constelation. Both were famous around the same time, Garrincha in the mid-ffties to the early sixties and Torquato from the mid sixties to the early seventies. Both came from small cities, one was from Pau Grande a small town in the State of Rio de Janeiro and the other one was from Teresina, the Capital of one of the poorest states of Brazil: Piaui. One was an outstanding writer, thinker and poet; the cultured son of a judge, who was to become the founder of the Brazil’s counter culture and the other was one of the fifteen semi-illiterate sons of a humble civil servant, who despite having crooked legs was one of Brazil’s best football (or soccer, for the US) players of all time.

Both had in common the destiny of being improbable stars, and of reaching greatness without losing their essence. Garrincha was second only to Pele in the history of Brazilian football. He was world champion twice for his country and in the second time in 1962 he led the squad almost by himself to victory, a feat only repeated by Maradona when he led the Argentinian squad to triumph in 1986. The difference between him and “King” Pele, was that the latter had the knack of P.R, and looked at his career beyond the football stadiums. Garrincha lived the here and now, devouring what life threw at him be it his talent, his trophies and his goals or be it women and hard partying. He enjoyed every moment of it until his legs could not accompany his playing and his hangovers.

Torquato Neto was the lyricist for Caetano Veloso and for GIlberto Gil in the beginning of their career and based on his writings they took by storm the most important music festivals of their generation. They became the visible face of the mainstream/underground Tropicalist movement that revolutionized Brazilian music and that guaranteed both of them stardom until the present days. As the movement’s theoretician and main writer Torquato mixed and made sense of nationalist values, revolutionary tendencies, folklore and rock and roll and set the foundations of modern Brazilian culture. The dictatorship didn’t know how to deal with that explosion of creativity and exiled all the three. When they came back, things became more professional and “movements” became bad for sales. Torquato Neto kept faithful to his ideas but was ostracized and became a “marginal” poet and film maker and faded into irrelevance as the recording companies, as well as his former buddies, prostituted his ideas and prospered.

Both the lives of Torquato Neto and Garrincha ended tragically the tropicalist mastermind committed suicide on his birthday in 1972, while the football player became a serious alcoholic and died in poverty with his body rejecting anything that was not booze.

It is also good to remember Carmen Miranda and Antonio Carlos Jobim were never “forgiven” for their success abroad. The Brazilian Hollywood star never got over the rejection she received from her own people, at the height of her success, after she came to Rio de Janeiro for a presentation. Many say that it was because of the depression this caused that she died. With Tom Jobim, the songwriter who made the “Girl From Ipanema” famous, it was not that bad but he was never regarded as likeable, but rather as an arrogant “sold out” big name by most Brazilians.

The anti-Lula crusade that is happening also configures in this category. For many it is unforgivable that a working class man without a university degree could be elected president twice, do a good government, and be acclaimed all over the world.

Anyway.. here is the question: is the cynicism towards talent and success when it escapes the expected “script” a Brazilian trait or a universal one? It is surely not an Argentinian one; they have forgiven time and again Maradona’s countless “sins” as well as their musical hero’s, Charlie Garcia, ones. Perhaps it is difficult for anyone to accept that some people are born with assets and talents that others but have the same flaws and anguished as us.

The destiny of Torquato Neto’s and Garrincha’s free and talented spirits remind us of how sweetness can become sour. It shows us how gifts can be bestowed upon anyone and have nothing to do with rewarding effort or with being upright. If their sin was falling or not following the tide, what does it say about the superficiality of the people who rejoiced in what they had to offer in the good days but discarded them when they were of no use any more?

There is an expression in Brazil saying that “one should not spit on the plate that we ate from” and this is what happened to them. The question remains, is this a Brazilian trait?

Joao Saldanha – the star coach

This man above is probably one of the most colorful people to belong to the Brazilian football pantheon. He is the coach who set up the legendary 1970 team and the most popular radio and tv commentator Brazil has ever known. Funny, lovable and polemic he was part and parcel of Rio’s, and indeed the country’s, football passion in its glory days.

The greatest peculiarity about him was that he was a member of the banned communist party. This was no small matter, the regime’s plan was to used that team riddled with stars such as Pele, Tostao Rivelino, Gerson and Carlos Alberto for propaganda, and they invested heavily in it. They wanted to silence the protests with a world cup win, meanwhile the man chosen for the job held meetings of their biggest enemy in his flat after training session.

This couldn’t last and they fired him after he refused to call up the President’s favorite player Dario, or Dada Maravilha, and after making political statements during his visit to Mexico to inspect the stadiums where the squad was going to play.

He went on to TV Globo, which at the time was like a dictatorship sponsored station, to become their leading football commentary man. He was excellent at that: one could not get enough of him talking, he made the strangest analogies of the games and of the players with known and made up folk stories. He also was politically incorrect and never shied away from slagging off coaches, players and club owners. Despite the craziness what he said was always precise and he was very influential in all matters: club policies, choices of coaches and of players, even in the national team.

As a coach and as a man of the press he was a libertarian who believed in allowing the players do what he could do best: play football, he was passionate about talent and understood where the players came from: the favelas and believed in bringing its joy and toughness to the field. This was not something small in a time with no political liberty while the country was drunk by their football success. As I stated above these were the glory days of Brazilian football, when players were not sold to the richer European clubs and people saw players as if they were their best friends.

We salute Joao Saldanha, a hero in that time and place.

If you are interested in the subject read my article: http://lostsambablog.com/2012/04/17/the-1982-team/

{FAVEL issues}

June of 1982.  The Seleção directed by Tele Santana enchanted the world with their beautiful soccer. I clearly remember the first game against the USSR (it happened on my birthday, as it very often do). The soviets scored first and Brazil spent the whole game on attack.  The equalizing goal came only at 30 min of the second half. With 3 minutes left Paulo Isidoro crossed from the right before the penalty area, Falcão opened his legs for the ball to continue its transversal to Eder who shot one of his cannon balls into the goal. Brasil 2×1 against a strong Soviet team. Paulo Isidoro and Eder (plus Luizinho and Cerezo) being from my beloved Atlético Mineiro I could not get a better birthday present.  Three weeks later they lost to Italy and entered history as the another great Brazilian that deserved to win but did not.

June 1982. The…

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