R2B: Brazil, Where the Beautiful Game Struts

The banner-waving, anthem-singing fans of Rio de Janeiro’s Flamengo club formed a billowing mass of ruby-and — black-clad humanity. They moved not only in reaction to the ebbs and flows on the field far below, but also to the samba beat pounded out by musicians in the midst of the grandstand mayhem around me and my friend Doug. The bands had not stopped playing, and fans had not stopped chanting, in the 18 minutes since the game began.

Then, on the field far below, a precision passer on the rival team Fluminense launched the ball straight for their top scorer. As nonchalantly as flipping a light switch, he scissor-kicked a strike past the keeper into the far left corner of the goal. Or as it is known locally:

“Goooooooooooool!”

On the other side of the stadium, the Fluminense fans — outfitted in green, grenadine and white — erupted, but they were so isolated, so far away, that they looked and sounded like television static with the volume turned way up. On our side, the samba ceased. The fans slumped — for about 10 seconds.

Then the Flamengo samba machine swung back into action. The fans started singing again, a love song to their team. Their banners waved like mainsails in a storm. Mourning would wait for later: Flamengo eventually lost 1-0. But in Brazil, telling fans to stop cheering because the opposing team scored would be like telling a D.J. to stop the party because someone danced badly.

In Brazil, soccer is not just a game, it’s a national drama. One of Brazil’s great 20th-century playwrights and novelists, Nelson Rodrigues, recognized that the sport trumped even his own craft in defining the nation. “Abroad, when you want to learn about a people, you examine their fiction,” he wrote. “In Brazil, football plays the role of fiction.”

Source: NY Times

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