70 years on from the ‘Maracanazo’, Brazil and Uruguay cannot forget

Rio de Janeiro (AFP) – Brazil great Pele was nine years old when his country suffered the “Maracanazo” trauma as Uruguay came from behind to win 2-1 in Rio de Janeiro to claim the 1950 World Cup.

Pele’s father burst into tears when the winning goal was scored by Alcides Ghiggia. The young Pele promised his father he would win a World Cup to make up for the disappointment.

The shock of defeat was palpable in and out of the stadium.

“It was the first time in my life that I heard something that wasn’t noise,” Uruguay’s Juan Alberto Schiaffino, who scored his country’s first goal, said years later.

Brazil’s trauma over a football defeat can be explained by the fact the country was looking for its place in the world while trying to consolidate itself as a nation state, says Ronaldo George Helal, a sociologist and professor at Rio de Janeiro State University.

The result of the match was viewed as “the victory or defeat of the Brazilian nation project,” based on the idea of a racially harmonious country united by football.

“Until the 1930s, there was no concept in Brazil about what the Brazilian nation was,” Helal told AFP.

By 1950 the country was heralded by UNESCO as the “exemplary situation” of “harmony” with football at its core.

The reality was a little different and black goalkeeper Moacir Barbosa was deemed the culprit by many.

“The maximum (prison) sentence (in Brazil) is 30 years, but I’ve already done 40 years,” Barbosa said in the 1990s.

– No ‘great feat’ –

In Uruguay, the victory was turned into a metaphor for how the small can overcome a giant.

While “Maracanazo” means a national tragedy in Brazil, in Uruguay it is used to describe a victory against the odds or the overcoming of adversity.

In reality, though, despite the difference in the size of the two countries — Brazil’s population was around 23 times greater than Uruguay’s in 1950 — this was no David defeating Goliath.

Uruguay were still a footballing superpower at the time having won the Olympic Games in 1924 and 1928 and the first World Cup in 1930.

“With the Maracanazo, sometimes the emphasis is put on a ‘great feat’ … and the fact that Uruguay had a great team is brushed aside,” said Uruguayan journalist Atilio Garrido, author of “Maracana, a secret history.”

For sociologist Felipe Arocena, from the Uruguay’s University of the Republic, what happened in the “Maracana was a confirmation for those that experienced it.”

from World Soccer Talk https://ift.tt/392F1Wh