Football

The Americans insist on calling it soccer.
And don't care a hell of a lot about it.

So only the Americans (with the possible exception of you,  our Dear American Readers) won't be glued to their television screens as the world's greatest sports drama plays out.
But I will.
And so will most of you who are reading this blog.

Yes, my friends, the day is nigh.

The Nineteenth World Cup is upon us.

204 nations competed to win a place in the playoffs.

That's 12 nations more than are represented in the United Nations.

32 countries will compete against each other in the stadiums of South Africa.

It's a cataclysmic event: the first time a World Cup final has ever been held on African soil.

The television audience during the decisive game will be ten times greater than that of the Superbowl.
And, while we're talking about superlatives, let me brag about this: Brazil is the only nation to have played in every World Cup - and the only  nation to have won it five times.

We celebrate our victories on the jerseys worn by the Brazilian team:

Each star denotes a win. CBF is an abbreviation for the Brazilian Football Confederation. And, yes, we do spell the name of the country with an "s".

Experiencing a World Cup in Brazil is not like watching a sporting event.

Experiencing a World Cup in Brazil is like participating in mass hysteria.

There will be, according to the experts, more than fifteen thousand heart attacks suffered by Brazilians watching the games on television.

About five thousand of them will occur in women.

Can Brazil win this year?

God knows.

Will there be a massive party if we do?

You bet there will!

How do I know?

Because I participated in the last one.

Hundreds of thousands of liters of cachaça will be uncapped; millions of liters of beer will be swilled; people will be embracing strangers on the streets; it will be Carnival on steroids.
The television networks will switch their coverage from city to city, showing the celebrants drinking and dancing. The festivities will carry-on throughout the night, continue into the following morning.

And, when the triumphant team returns, the party will start all over again. Thousands will greet them at the airport; the heroes will visit every major city in the country; they’ll climb up onto open trucks and be paraded through the streets.

Here in Brazil, the media coverage of the World Cup has already begun. The national news, on Globo, Brazil’s largest television network, is featuring a daily five-minute profile of each player. They’ll keep it up until they work their way through all 22 members of the national team (first and second string).

Like bullfighters in Spain, most Brazilian footballers stem from humble origins. For a kid with talent, it’s a path to fame and riches. For a poor family, a kid with talent is a godsend.

Of the first five players profiled, we’ve been told that two had their umbilical cords buried (by their fathers) on a football pitch. It’s something you’re supposed to do if you want that recently-born infant of yours to grow up to be a great player.

Many of the parents of these young men have set up what you might call domestic shrines to their offspring. What do they contain? Well, you’ll generally find the jersey he wore in the state championship; the shoes he wore on the day he scored his first professional goal; the yellowing bit of newsprint where his picture appeared for the first time, and anything else that traces his trajectory from the first time he kicked a ball. The kids in the neighborhood visit those shrines. And dream. And then go out and work their tails off – for years. And thus is the Brazilian skill at the game of football perpetuated.

The choice of who gets to be on the national team is up to this man: Carlos Caetano Bledorn Verri, nicknamed Dunga.

Dunga was a great player in his own right. He played on the team that won the World Cup in 1994, and now he’s the técnico for the national team.

Here's Dunga's selection for the first string.
If they win, he’ll be a national hero for years to come.

If they lose, it’s likely Dunga will have to take a long vacation abroad, or go to coach a team in someplace very far away.

Ah! Those last three words (very far away) reminded me of something.

In addition to the player profiles, and the (almost) daily interviews with Dunga, Globo is running a series of mini-documentaries about the countries already scheduled to play against Brazil.

The first was about North Korea.
The program aired last week. 

The initial images were of marching men, huge statues of the “great leader”, archive footage of Kim Il Jung addressing a party congress, grim-faced solders and unfriendly cops. The audio began: “This is North Korea. It’s a dictatorship. People don’t laugh very much. You don’t hear a lot of music. And it appears that people don’t know how to dance very well. North Korea is very far away from Brazil…fortunately.”

An additional five minutes of every edition of the Jornal Nacional is given over to feature stories about the host country - South Africa.

Brazilians have recently learned that South Africans do know how to dance, that people smile a lot, that it isn’t a dictatorship and that there’s music everywhere.

This has led to a feeling that South Africans are very much like Brazilians and that the two countries are very similar. To a certain extent, this is true. Unfortunately, the similarities include high crime and unemployment rates. But the realization that they’re dealing with common problems has caused Brazilians to like South Africans even more. I expect there will be many Brazilians visiting South Africa, not only during the cup, but during the years to come. And if Brazil were to lose this year, many in this country are already saying they'd prefer it to be to the South Africans. (And not, God forbid, to the Argentinians.)

It doesn’t look, however, as if our friends in South Africa have much of a chance of pulling off a victory. At the moment, the bookmakers in London favor Spain, closely followed by Brazil and England. Argentina is next, then Holland, Germany and Italy. It’s going to be a big surprise if the World Champion doesn’t turn out to be one of those seven.

Check out the schedule of the early games here:

http://www.fifa.com/worldcup/matches/index.html

And place your bets.

Leighton - Monday