If football is “o Jogo bonito”, the Beautiful game, how can something so beautiful sentence a practitioner to 50 years jail term for playing the sport?
What If the world press did not view the 1950 World cup from the eyes of Brazil, and tag the match the Maracana Tragedy but instead call it “The Miracle of Maracana”, “A Victory for Football” or “A Tragedy of Expectations?” If other underdog victories are tagged “Miracles”, why has this been different?
“I am not guilty. There were 11 of us.” “In Brazil, the maximum sentence is thirty years, but I have served fifty.”Moacyr Barbosa Goalkeeper for Brazil, 1950 World Cup final match between Brazil & Uruguay
EXTRACT
Barbosa passed on in 2000, 2 years before the Oliver Kahn error. I wonder what Cafu said to Oliver Kahn. I wonder if Cafu can bring a similar message back to Brazil and the family of Barbosa, if he has surviving relatives.
I wonder what message the Brazilian World Cup winners, who are cherished by the nation, would take back to Brazil after human errors have gifted them with World Cup titles outside of Brazil.
I can’t help wondering if the Brazilian public will be humble enough to banish the ignorance of the subsisting arrogance and apologize to the squad of 1950.
If Brazil is happy with the trophies they have won outside of Brazil, can they now accept that Sports is not a do or die affair and spare the surviving relatives of the 1950 World Cup players’ further torture? And by so doing, show others, that by accepting their loss to Brazil, they are neither fools nor inferior humans? Can they help these dejected souls, the Brazilian players of 1950, recover from the public imposed jail terms and see themselves as patriotic as other players who have won the trophy for Brazil?
Some believed that the Maracanã was ‘cursed’, but with Germany beating Brazil 7-1 in another stadium, in the 2014 World Cup semi-finals, can they remove the ‘curse’ tag? At least it shows that victory or defeat can happen in any stadium.
Brazil finally won the Olympic soccer gold in 2016, with Neymar scoring the first goal before Germany equalized, and then scoring the winning penalty, in the same Maracanã Stadium in Rio de Janeiro. Maybe, with this victory, Brazilians will accept that the Maracanã is not cursed.
And that the Brazilian players of 1950 were not cursed either.
That the Barbosa tragedy should never have happened.
That the events of 1950 at the Maracana was nothing more than an early showing of the beautiful side of soccer, o Jogo bonito!!
