As Brazil prepare for their final game of the tournament they hosted, the anticlimax known as the third-place play-off, we look at five positives for Brazil football to have come out of the 2014 World Cup.
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Overdue overhaul
When Brazil were crushed in the 1998 World Cup final by France, such was the dismay and introspection that congressional inquiries were launched into the Brazilian football federation (CBF) and the wider workings of the country’s football system. The reports were published in 2001 and recommended criminal investigations into large parts of Brazil’s football institution.
However, when Luiz Felipe Scolari led Brazil to a fifth World Cup title the following year in Japan and Korea, the reports were quickly forgotten and no investigations took place. It was not until March 2012, when Ricardo Teixeira, who had led the CBF since 1989, was found guilty by a Fifa ethics inquiry of accepting illegal financial payments regarding marketing rights of the 2014 World Cup, that his position was finally made untenable.
The hope is Tuesday night’s 7-1 defeat to Germany will reignite investigations and prompt an overhaul not of the squad – no one player needs to be blamed or blackballed – but rather the structure of the country’s entire football system. The Brazilian league is the seventh-highest earning in the world, yet attendances are often poor, its top clubs are millions of dollars in debt and the best players continue to be sold to Europe from a young age.
Romario, the World Cup winner turned outspoken congressman, has called for the arrest of CBF president Jose Maria Marin and his successor-to-be Marco Polo Del Nero. “Our football has been deteriorating for years,” he tweeted. “Sucked by moguls. They get their luxury boxes at stadiums, toasting the millions that go into their accounts. A gang of robbers, gangsters and corrupt!”
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Not a Golden Generation
Not even Brazilians genuinely believed they would win this World Cup. It was more a show of faith than a matter of certainty. Scolari had assembled a team not of world champions but rather a group of players who could exert a physical presence while relying on the frailer figures of Neymar and Oscar to provide a little flair. Unlike some teams, this month did not mark a last shot at glory for a “golden generation” .
These players will never get a chance to win again on home soil but, as Scolari suggested, 13 or 14 of the squad will likely be in Russia in 2018. Neymar and Oscar are 22 and so each have another two World Cups in their legs. Complement their experience with a forward-thinking, attack-minded coach and freshen the squad with the likes of Everton Ribeiro, Sandro, Lucas Moura, Philippe Coutinho and Santos’s young striker Gabriel and Brazil will arrive in Russia with a stronger group and far less pressure.
The search for the sixth star has not ended, it has merely stalled.
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History boys
Immediately after Tuesday’s match, as Brazilians flooded out of Belo Horizonte in tears and fan fests erupted in life-goes-on celebrations, a Sao Paulo street artist was painting a mural at his city’s Guarulhos International Airport. The work included the famous faces of Pele, Djalma Santos and Gylmar and was inscribed with the words: “The mistakes that built this humiliating defeat cannot erase the winning history of Brazil and its heroes.”
Even if Germany go on to win Sunday’s final, such is Brazil’s World Cup record, the host nation will remain the country with the most titles (five), the country that is, historically, looked to as the ultimate practitioners of the beautiful game and the country that gave the world many of the world’s greatest ever players. A series of uninspiring performances and one heavy defeat will not change that. This may be the nadir, but things can only get better,
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Off-pitch success
There was a belief, largely peddled by foreigners, that Brazil would erupt in anger when their team were knocked out of the World Cup. Even before the match had ended, fake photographs of riots on Brazil’s streets were circulating on social media. Buses set alight in Sao Paulo were quickly blamed on football, when in truth they were more to do with a rivalry between opposing bus operators.
Foreign media immediately started suggesting Brazil’s defeat meant the expense of the World Cup was somehow more glaring. “Brazil spent $11bn on a national calamity”, wrote one British newspaper. No it did not. Tuesday night’s result is as irrelevant to the cost of hosting the month-long event as it would have been if Brazil had gone on to lift the trophy.
Brazil have hosted a fantastic tournament. The airports and stadiums and street parties have proved organised and safe and the hundreds of thousands of people who visited will undoubtedly leave with positive memories. Yes, the project was unforgivably over-budget, the white-elephant stadiums remain an issue and money could have been spent better elsewhere, but even if Brazil had won this would have been the case. The fact they did not, does not amplify the cost..
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Inspiring
In the years leading up to this summer’s tournament, Pele would often recall his memory of the 1950 World Cup final, which he watched as a young boy and which Brazil surprisingly lost to Uruguay. His father, watching on TV with friends, wept and the nine-year-old Pele told him something along the lines of: “One day, dad, I will win the World Cup for Brazil and bring joy to this great nation.” He went on to help win titles for Brazil in 1958, 1962 and 1970.
It is not beyond the realm of the imagination to suppose a new batch of young boys will have watched Tuesday’s humiliation with their teary parents and promised to bring future success. Of course, the majority will do no such thing, but if it strengthens the character and determination of a generation of children to believe they can improve their country, be it through football or other means, then that must surely be seen as a silver lining. Defeat makes me stronger: that should be the enduring message.
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