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Articles & Blogs Home That Special Relationship ... Schadenfreude ... Poverty ... Memory ...   ON BRAZIL Memory/Art/Sprawl/Tele by Robert Reid Two events have dominated Selecao football in recent weeks- the obsession of whether Brazil’s 2006 team can equal history’s best 'futebol arte', and the passing of the former coach Tele Santana. The events are definitely not unrelated. A long, long time ago teams went to the World Cup to play. From 1950 to 1970 Brazilian teams were able to thrive in this environment, bringing the world imaginative passing, mazy dribbles, LA freeway interchange-shaped combinations, Garrincha and Jairzihno galloping down the right flank like horses through the undeveloped Carioca countryside. Those days are over. The suburban sprawl has taken over football. There’s no room to “play” anymore, only win. The canvas size for 'futebol arte' has been reduced from a Diego Rivera communism-in–the-tropics mural to cream-colored 70’s minimalist sculpture. Teams don’t want to do anything more than win; one more penalty than the opposition will do, one striker will do (please note that Roma has been pretty successful recently with NO strikers). Destroying, or at the very least deconstructing, art has always been easier than creating it. It is a natural human tendency to want to recreate the idyllic past. The images of yesteryear, even in black and white, are more vivid, more beautiful than those of yesterday, and Brazilian football is no exception. It has the added burden of recreating this past not only for its own 180 million citizens that specialize in saudade, or longing (and not very quiet longing at that), but for black guys in Chicago like me, half of Japan, everyone in Haiti, and another 1.5 billion people (including those Bangladeshis who bravely fought the Argentina fans in a remote village in 2002 with stones and iron rods for the right to fly the Brazilian flag on the tallest coconut tree). Unfortunately as we all know from Rio to London, Port au Prince to Tokyo, Bangladesh to Chicago, there is no way back. Yet one man almost did the impossible for all of us, almost found the way back through time and space: Tele Santana. The images he created nearly bettered the images of yesteryear. You already have the 1982 images in your head- not only does Socrates stride through the undeveloped countryside to beat Dino Zoff, but he does it from that Zico turn (which must have broken some law of physics). Junior glides through the sprawl/KFC/outlet mall traffic to receive the return pass. Eder’s chip flies softly through the air. The staid English announcer screams “BRILLIANT!!…ABSOLUTELY BRILLIANT!!” as if he caught of glimpse of absorption into the one divine reality with all loss of attachment. 2006 brings the best chance of gloriously victorious 'futebol arte' in years. The talent is there, maybe the most ever. The question isn’t whether this otherworldly talent is enough to allow Brazil to win; it is and their chances far exceed anyone else’s. The real question now- the question we haven’t been able to ask in decades- is whether the talent is enough to transcend the ravenous packs of petty bargain-seekers. Can Ronaldinho’s proclamation that “you’ll see the Art in Germany” withstand team after European team attempting to blow it up like the Taliban did those Buddhist statues in a most-likely-vain attempt at their precious 1-0 win on a non-call from a violent set piece scrum? For those of you who think this is verbose exaggeration: in 27 World Cup matches since 1982, Italy scored two goals only nine times. This means 66.6667% of the time Italy might score one goal. Italy is talented. They have the Buddhist Baggios and Tottis but from the statistical evidence it quite seems they prefer destroying your efforts to building statues. European “superpower” France seemed quite content with those 1-0 wins in their pathetic qualifying morass (the group: Ireland, Switzerland, Israel, Cyprus, and, um…the Faeroe Islands). Why should the finals be any different? The last time we saw the Art in the World Cup was in the temporary exhibition space, the flowing, exhilarating, Edmilson-bicycle kick 5-2 game against Costa Rica. Alan Hansen perfectly described it during the broadcast as “Brazil verses Brazil.” Europe will not allow Brazil to play Brazil or anyone else for that matter because there is a 96.6667% chance they will lose. Perhaps before each game, during the Brazilian anthem opposing teams should be allowed to kick Robinho’s ankles to shreds a la ‘66 just to get it over with. Maybe some Latin Americans will actually attempt to play against Brazil, but that’s about it. Maybe we will see a Brazil-Argentina final. Probably not. The odds are so incredibly stacked against the Art and anything worthy of Tele, the obsession with the past so thorough and suffocating it’s a testament to the mind-blowing array of Brazilian talent ready to be displayed that the question is even being pondered. But in order to be transcendent, you have to transcend something, and there’s a lot to be transcended in Germany. That’s what makes it special. If anyone is going to ensure we’ll see the Art in Germany, you want it to be the one who delivers against Chelsea, the best money can buy in any pre-fabricated, instantly-gratified mall anywhere in the world. You want it to be Ronaldinho. Do you have a comment on this article. Send us an email () with your comments and we'll put it up here. To Top Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life Email: Copyright © 2005 by Alex Bellos. Published by Bloomsbury, New York and London. Distributed to the trade by Holtzbrinck Publishers.