by Adam Peacock
Chile equalise when Brazil turn the ball over cheaply and three passes later Alexis Sanchez buries it past Julio Cesar. Like Chile’s first game of the World Cup, a team in yellow’s carelessness has been punished by the brilliance of Alexis.
Carlao and Conor, two men who have every right to be anti-establishment and not care if Brazil get through, ride each moment as if their lives depended on it. The kids of the favela take their lead and feel the same. That society has left them to overcome insurmountable challenges is beside the point. Their investment in this contest is equal to what the richest can afford.
Penalties are required to determine a winner. Julio Cesar, now playing club football in Canada, is the hero, saving the first two Chilean efforts before Gonzalo Jara smashes the post with his, sending Brazil into the quarter-finals. Jara, remember, is the man who tried to get Tim Cahill sent off. Karma has smacked him in the face. Harder than Cahill wanted to.
Brazil goes spare and the favela erupts. For so long, gunfire has spread fear in these parts, but today gunpowder is a sign of jubilation. In between the bone-jarring bangs, music is turned up to full blare. The term ‘they’ll be dancing in the streets …’ is such an old-fashioned thought, a phrase suited to medieval times. And now. Quite literally, the people of Barreira do Vasco are dancing in the streets. The whole place is jumping, as vibrant as it has ever been. Strangers run up offering beer, food, hugs, smiles, happiness! They have nothing, but want to give you everything.
Feast in Berreira do Vasco before the Chile v Brazil game.
4 July 2014, Forteleza: BRAZIL 2 COLOMBIA 1
The favela can’t be topped, yet Alzirao comes close. Neymar’s lookalike, the larger-than-life figure clad in sequins holding the giant World Cup, and 10,000 others crammed into this famous street belt out the national anthem, creating a wall of sound helped by the supersonic audio through the big screen. As is their wont to control the world, FIFA put a 90-second limit on the music to accompany national anthems. So the Brazilian team only gave 60 seconds of music. When the music died, the anthem didn’t, as the team, the stadium and places like Alzirao continued singing well beyond the allotted 90 seconds. Good luck quelling 200 million voices, FIFA. And what a sound, right up until the final line, ‘Pátria amada, Brasil!’ ‘Beloved land, Brazil!’ That final exclamation mark is the ninth of the lyric, giving an idea of the enthusiasm required when reciting the whole thing with the best saved until last.
It sets the occasion perfectly and Brazil respond with another early goal from a corner, this time from captain Tiago Silva, kneeing into the back of the Colombian net. It ensures a chaotic encounter. The home side push on because talking albino macaws are more common than a Brazilian team sitting on a lead.
Colombia is too brilliant and fearless to not chase the game, a trait of a people encouraged by what the future may hold. Once overrun by crime, Colombia is now a nation ravaged by perception. Many think it is a small South American country. Some 47 million people live there. It is not a lawless drug haven any more, though it’s most famous football moment was borne out of that period. The 20th anniversary of Andrés Escobar falls during the World Cup. Escobar scored an own goal at USA ’94 and 10 days later was shot outside a Medellin bar, a symbol of the tragic lawlessness that gripped his nation at the time. Thankfully, it has stabilised. Guerrillas are still fighting a 60-year war in parts of the country, but after six decades no-one is quite sure exactly why. Sure, imperfections exist. It isn’t South America if it isn’t a little chaotic, but the quiet majority of Colombia has moved on and wishes the world would too.
The national football team certainly has. It is a young, energetic side on the way up, centred around James Rodriguez, or Hamez, as his name is pronounced. At 1-0 in a World Cup quarter-final, all of Brazil knows exactly who he is – the cause of their fears.
The half-time whistle offers a reprieve. Ordinarily, the 15-minute break would only serve as time to think how it can all go wrong. How does Alzirao make sure those wretched thoughts don’t occur? A full-blown Samba party, of course. As 11 Brazilians are locked away in their dressing room job half-done, their compatriots dance in rhythmic unison to Carnaval’s greatest hits. The half-time show only stops a few seconds after the second half starts on the big screen. The game has got in the way of a good time. The next 45 minutes will determine if the party restarts … and lasts for days.
A tense first 20 minutes is made worse by a moment of pure idiocy from Tiago Silva, who with the C around his arm should know better. Colombian keeper David Ospina collects the ball and is about to send it into orbit, before Silva blocks his last movement. Silva gets a yellow card, gold-plated stupidity really, because it’s his second of the tournament and he’ll miss the semi-final should Brazil make it. Usually composed, almost always the coolest man on the pitch regardless of who he is marking, Silva is Brazil’s rock at the back that won’t face the Germans.
It is left to fellow central defender, the infinitely more flamboyant David Luiz, to move the plot forward five minutes later. Luiz has a knack of forgetting he’s a centre-back, going off on marauding runs like he’s on a computer game and is overriding the instructions of the human in control of his movements. His free kick ability is also a break from the conventional for his role. His trademark is to smash the ball with the side of his foot from a distance making it float rapidly without a set path through the air. A bit like his positional sense on a pitch. On this occasion, he lets rip from 25 yards and Ospina is aggrieved to only get a slight touch with his left hand, nowhere near enough to stop it flying in. 2-0. Luiz, Alzirao, Brazil go mental.
Colombia don’t vanish, instead their young superstar James (Haaaamez) gets one back from the spot, before the moment that changes the narrative again. This time, it changes the whole World Cup.
Neymar the impersonator has watched all of this at Alzirao as if his livelihood depended on it, probably because it does. He rides every challenge, implores his team to make the right choice when in possession, going ballistic when a movement breaks down thanks to a lack of composure or skill. And now, he can’t bear to watch, his hands covering his face. He’s gone into shock.
Juan Zuniga, the Colombian left-back, has clattered into the real Neymar, who was waiting for the ball to gently drop to a manageable height to try and control it. The reward was a knee in the base of the vertebrae, and even by Neymar’s standards – he does have occasional issues with gravity when defenders are close – he is in agony, screaming on the ground. Play doesn’t stop, advantage is given and not until Brazil’s counter-attack ends is it apparent Neymar is in real trouble. By this stage Neymar the impersonator is close to tears, slowly rocking back and forth muttering prayers. The real Neymar is lifted onto a stretcher and taken out of sight, but certainly not out of mind.
Eventually Brazil hang on 2-1 and are through to the semi-final. Alzirao is again a fiesta of colour, sound and movement, though Neymar the impersonator departs the scene quickly. The result has gone to plan. The party will too. Yet something is not quite right.
5 to 7 July 2014: THE SOAP OPERA
The four days after the quarter-final turn into a full-scale soap opera. Brazil loves a soap opera almost as much as it loves football. Neymar does too, his girlfriend Bruna Marquezine is the lead actress on the popular primetime show Em Família. Now he is the lead role in one and it has the country gripped. Hours after Juan Zuniga fractured Neymar’s back, he was airlifted to hospital in São Paulo where a huge crowd had gathered. The next day, Leo Messi, LeBron James and every Brazilian who’s ever played football passed on get well messages. Brazilian president, Dilma Rousseff, chimed in with this press release:
Dear Neymar,
It broke my heart and the heart of every Brazilian watching the pain on your face on the Castelão field yesterday.
But we also saw the immense strength of a great warrior, who will never let himself be held back even when wounded.
A great warrior who briefly interrupts his march, having al
ready left his insurmountable mark on the victorious battle our Seleção is fighting.
I know that, like every Brazilian, you will never give up, and sooner than one can imagine, you will be back to fill our souls with joy and our history with triumph.
May God give you strength and always protect you.
Dilma Rousseff
President of the Federative Republic of Brazil
Imagine if a real soldier were wounded in a real war.
As Neymar lay prone in hospital, Juan Zuniga, the culprit, received death threats via social media. Ronaldo, the Brazilian legend, calls it deliberate. The referee Carlos Carballo didn’t punish Zuniga and he’s copping it from all angles too – Colombians aren’t happy with some decisions and some roughhouse tackling from the hosts. One paper, Diario del Magdalena, calls Carballo the ‘son of a massive whore’.
Tiago Silva also tries to appeal his yellow card for blocking Ospina. On the scale of stupidity, the action was pretty dumb. On that same scale, to appeal it was somewhere between Brick Tamland and Lloyd Christmas.
Nothing though can take the focus off one subject. Neymar. Neymar. Neymar. He’s scored four goals and is at the centre of everything Brazil has done well, but all of it is pushed aside by mixed feelings of sorrow and hope that their smiling, brilliant number 10 will be able to get on with a normal life. A small fracture has splintered a nation’s psyche.
8 July 2014, Belo Horizonte: BRAZIL 1 GERMANY 7
Copacabana Beach looking ominous on kick-off for Brazil v Germany … and with good reason.
If Neymar’s teammates seem downcast he is not with them, they are doing a magnificent job of covering it up. The bus ride to the ground is covered in full on TV networks (yes, 45 minutes of the top of a bus from a helicopter) and ends with arrival at the ground. Yet for two minutes, no-one gets off. The camera zooms in, the bus is rocking. Twenty-two Brazilian footballers, plus staff, are jumping up and down, banging on the windows to a Samba beat. Even the driver is smiling, nodding his head. Are they on a buck’s party or at a World Cup semi-final?
The Germans alight their bus expressionless, no fuss.
The Brazilians sing their national anthem with the usual lung-bursting fervour as David Luiz and Julio Cesar hold up Neymar’s jersey, a reminder to anyone who might have slept for four days that he won’t be playing.
Germany sings theirs with pride, but without the condiments. ‘Deutschlandlied’ isn’t a happy-go-lucky celebration; the drone of brass and slow tempo will never lead to a complete dismantling of emotions. The Germans will do that another way in the space of 45 minutes. In one half of football, every German pass was with delivered with the precision of a sniper. Two hundred million Brazilians, the frontline being those 11 on the pitch, can only stand unawares as shot after shot is fired their way.
It starts on 11 minutes as Thomas Müller finds metres of space from a corner – the equivalent of an acre – after his marker David Luiz got held up in traffic. 1-0.
Then the six minutes and 41 seconds that will haunt Brazil for as long as there is a Brazil. It is only fair to present those six minutes and 41 seconds in a cold-blooded, factual manner, which best pays tribute to the perpetrators’ method.
22 minutes 9 seconds: The Brazilians are befuddled by lateral movement. Toni Kroos advances, cuts it to Müller, who delivers a subtle flick to Miroslav Klose who has two cracks, the second of which he buries. 2-0.
23 minutes 57 seconds: Kroos again with the ball just in Brazil’s half. Four teammates in front, along with eight opposition. He sweeps it to the right, Phillip Lahm makes the byline and cuts to a waiting Kroos who scores with his left. 3-0. Men, women and children shake with disbelief in the stands.
25 minutes 8 seconds: Fernandinho loses the ball facing his own goal, and Kroos is the thief who profits. He plays a 1-2 with Sami Khedira and makes no mistake again. 4-0. Men, women and children cry openly in the stands.
28 minutes 50 seconds: Mats Hummels takes off down the spine of the pitch, just keeping possession with a sliding flick onto Khedira, who finds Mesut Ozil at the top of the box. Ozil calmly sends the ball back to Khedira who lashes it with his right. 5-0. Men, women and children are now wailing in the stands.
Mineirao, with its pitch rated the best of the World Cup, is a long way from an under-8s game on a chewed-up patch of grass in the depths of winter. This is a mismatch of colossal proportions. Flowers may be needed tomorrow, given the sympathy these magnificent hosts deserve. The fans, not the players, not the coach, not the football authorities. They deserve nothing. The people that follow them deserve everything.
Germany kick off, they score, and so it goes on. Intelligence of movement is superior to anything they are up against as Brazil surges forward without any hint of responsibility, leaving a trail for the Germans to tread once the ball is invariably lost by a yellow shirt in a wide area. Once that path is navigated, the snipers go to work. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. No mess. Precise. And Brazil just stand there, defenceless.
It would end up 7-1, Brazil’s worst ever defeat on the biggest occasion on home soil since they heartbreakingly lost the final game of the 1950 World Cup to Uruguay.
Twelve months after the riots about the cost of hosting a World Cup, would Brazil plunge into chaos? No. It would plunge into an emotional abyss. This was a destruction of an institution. Fights broke out at the stadium, but that happens at every sporting venue on the planet when alcohol is mixed with disappointment and differing views. In Rio, mother nature played a role in allaying anarchy. A huge thunderstorm hit Copacabana Beach on kick-off and the rain didn’t stop for three days. Human anger is no match for the heavens when they are in a dark mood. Buses were torched in São Paulo and that was about all the media had to work with in terms of reports of doomsday. They were waiting. The world was waiting, almost expecting. There is a joyful naïveté to how life is approached in Brazil: there’ll be a party tomorrow, there’ll be fun to be had somewhere or how. 7-1 is one giant test of that ideal. Total embarrassment was met with … total embarrassment.
----
Of course, life goes on, infinitely less exuberant the day after the nightmare before. Cab drivers laugh at the magnitude of the loss. One reckons Scolari is on the take. The papers humiliate the boss and his players. One publication gives the lot of them zeroes. Another, sport daily Lance! has a simple blank page on the cover. All white, apart from a few words like ‘indignation’ and ‘frustration’ scribbled down the bottom.
Butecos operate as normal, beer near freezing, football discussed, though with a strain of disgust. It doesn’t turn into a violent hellhole. Those who are able to avoid desperation and crime are not violent people. From the favelas to beachfront villas they live in their own imperfect paradise, besotted by football, transfixed by the need to enjoy the good times and accept the bad times for what they are, and nothing more. It gets no worse than a 7-1 defeat.
8.
THE NEW MESSIAH?
Brasil, decime qué se siente tener en casa a tu papáaaa!
Te juro que aunque pasen los años, nunca nos vamos a olvidarrrrr!
Que el Diego te gambeteó
El Cani los vacunó,
Que estás llorando desde Italia hasta hoy.
A Messi lo vas a ver, la Copa nos va a traer,
Maradona es más grande que Pelé!
And so go the lyrics to the song of the World Cup. Not that fairy-pop mesh of Samba and synth ‘sung’ by Jennifer Lopez and Pitbull, who, after waiting for the music to subside, opens his mouth and cries, ‘When the going gets tough, the tough get going’. One small step for man, one giant leap backwards for mankind. Thankfully, the Argentinians, looking to provoke, brought a different version. Creedence Clearwater Revival’s ‘Bad Moon Rising’ is the tune. The lyrics are all-Argentinian at their disparaging best.
Brazil, tell me how it feels to have your Daddy in your house?
I swear that even as the years pass, we will never forget
How Diego ou
tplayed you
How Cani fucked you
You’ve been crying since Italy until today.
You’re going to see Messi, he’ll bring us back the Cup,
Maradona is greater than Pelé!
Argentinian party on Copacabana Beach by day.
On the beach, in the stands, at the bars, on public transport – they didn’t have an invitation to sing it, nor did they want one. Whenever it was, wherever they were, it started, and usually ended in a whirl of sky blue and white, a mass of bodies and voices as one. It was no way to treat the hosts, but that is exactly the point. Shakespeare has Montagues and Capulets. Football has Brazil and Argentina. In other walks of life, they get along just fine. For the best part of two centuries they’ve enjoyed peaceful relations, and in fact now have military alliances. Their governments are amicable. And in Churrasco houses (ubiquitous all-you-can-eat BBQs) the number one cut of meat is typically Argentinian.
Football is the intense exception and ‘Bad Moon Rising’ Buenos Aires-style is the latest shot across enemy lines. Like any great football song, it cuts at a rival, boils blood, sending a surge of anger through every vein it’s aimed at, while self-indulgently proclaiming the pantheon-like status of those they are singing for. There is no need to promote the song, put it through a studio and add a famous voice. It’s too provocative, too spontaneous, and well beyond anything a FIFA marketing executive or Top 40 songwriter would ever go near. Never mind the fact Brazil has won five World Cups to Argentina’s two – the common comeback to any insult the Argentinians throw – truth is a mere condiment when insults are served. The sheer audacity of it all is why it works, the opening line stating ‘we own you’ before baiting Brazil about Argentina’s 1-0 win in the Round of 16 clash at Italia ’90, where Maradona dazzled and Claudio Caniggia (Cani) scored the winner.
