Michael Batson

I once criss-crossed swathes of South America for four months by road, rail, and on water, with some flights in-between travelling from place-to-place, city-to-city, and country-to-country. The overwhelming impression you get of South America is one of diversity followed by its scale, it’s huge; Argentina is the eight-largest country in the world but is still dwarfed by its neighbour, Brazil. I went to Brazil by road from Paraguay. I travelled from Curitiba (voted Brazil’s best big city to live, and noted for its radical, progressive ideas) by bus to São Paulo, a megalopolis, and the largest city in the Southern Hemisphere. São Paulo is Brazil’s industrial engine and financial centre, and goes on for miles. From there I went to Rio de Janeiro (“January River” and named for Saint Sebastian) along a freeway which took an age to clear the limits of Brazil’s urban colossus. If São Paulo is a man-made concrete jungle with a population bigger than most countries, Rio is a spectacular natural wonder, for as they say; “God spent six days making the rest of the world, then saved the seventh for Rio”. There I was lucky to see some of the city’s more famous sights and eye-catching spectacles including a football match but not just any game anywhere. I saw two of the biggest clubs in the world play one of the world’s biggest local derbies in the world’s football biggest stadium, an experience which has stayed with me to this day.

 

A couple of people at my hotel, in the wonderfully named seaside Rio suburb of Glória, mentioned they were going to watch football, and not to just any venue – to the famed Maracanã no less. Brazilians refer to “their” Maracanã as the “Templo sagrado no país do futebol” (“the holy temple in the land of football” or futebol). No one seemed sure who was playing but it didn’t matter to me. One football writer has said that games at the Maracanã are a bit like the Stars Wars movie in that they start long before and far, far away. All over Rio crowds begin assembling for the pilgrimage to the arena to watch their heroes play and hopefully win. Groups of mainly young men stand on street corners drinking the local brew adorned in their club’s colours. Thereafter the poor get on buses and those that can pile into cars for the breakneck drive across town to the stadium. It’s been said that if Brazil has drink-drive laws, no one seems to give them much thought. I got the train.

 

One of the spectacles in Rio is train-surfing. For your entertainment you can watch daring young men or complete idiots, you be the judge, riding on the roof of moving trains in surfing mode, like on a board on the waves but dodging the electrical wires and other hazards at speed while risking dismemberment, likely decapitation. Over 100 people are killed each year in Rio engaging in this pastime, unsurprising really. By comparison sitting inside like normal people seemed rather tame but far saner. There’s a train station right outside the stadium which is part of a sports complex that includes an indoor arena known by the name of Maracanãzinho, which means “The Little Maracanã” in Portuguese, and an outdoor swimming pool.

 

Big is not always best but it can be impressive, and the Maracanã is a remarkable sight, not for its architectural charm, but for its sheer size. It resembles classical Rome’s Coliseum but with a capacity larger than that of the Circus Maximus, minus the chariot racing. For a long time, the Maracanã was considered capable of holding 200.000 people, though the exact maximum capacity remained unknown. Brazil asserts this to be more than 200.000, the Guinness Book of World Records allotted 180.000, while others quoted about 155.000. Put another way, according to the Brazilian figure, it would fit the capacity crowds of Wembley Stadium twice over with room to spare, the Allianz Arena three times, and the Nou Camp twice. The official attendance at the final game of the 1950 World Cup Final, for which the stadium was initially built, was 199,854, though unofficially it was said to be 210,000. Either way it was the largest crowd ever to see a football game—a record that is highly unlikely to be threatened in an era when most international matches are played in all-seater stadiums.

 

The stadium is characterised by its elliptical framework which is almost circular. The cheapest section, the gallery (or geral in Portuguese), standing at pitch level, has long since been closed off, and apart from some medium-sized open boxes where the glitterati perch, the whole ground is one long sweep of two-tiered steeped concrete terraces (arquibancadas). You can see why it might be hard to determine crowd size, especially if tickets aren’t counted or people get into the ground without buying one, because there weren’t any seats. Then there’s the roof; spectators sit on the roof, a great view and dangerous—but then this is the city where people ride outside trains for fun, so why would they care. The design of the roof, the crowning glory, afforded fabulous views of Rio's skyline. Back then there was a cantilevered roof spanning 30m but covered just those rows at the rear of the stadium. The façade of the elliptical perimeter incorporated 60 large Y-shaped pillars that sustained the supporting beams. It was built using solid and reinforced concrete and lots of it, as Brazil embarked on a massive construction phase to be followed later by a new capital city, built from scratch in the jungle.

 

What really sets the Maracanã apart is its history. Back in the late 1940s the Brazilian state decided to construct a gigantic stadium, imagined by seven architects. The foundations of the Maracanã were laid in 1948 but it was only properly finished two decades later, in 1965. It was to become the world’s largest football stadium fit for the continent’s biggest country and considered by many, the spiritual home of football, the global game. It was built as the giant centrepiece of the 1950 World Cup, the first of the post-World War Two era; those in 1942 and 1946 being cancelled.

 

There was opposition to the project due to cost and the location. Some wanted it elsewhere in Rio, some not at all. In the end it was built on the site of a former racecourse, the Derby Clube, where the Emperor of Brazil would go, in the Maracanã neighbourhood. The whole area is named after the Rio Maracanã, a murky river now canalised in Grande Tijuca prefecture in Rio’s North Zone, an area prone to flooding and accessed by road along Avenida Maracanã or Maracanã Avenue. Rio’s mayor then was a military man appointed by another general. No one was required to express a vote, and public consultation wasn’t really their modus operandi. There was also a tennis stadium nearby around where Mario Zagallo, later a World Cup winner with Brazil as both a player and as a coach, played football.

 

The stadium’s most vocal advocate was sports journalist and writer, Mário Rodriques Filho (later the stadium would be named for him), the founding editor of Mundo Esportivo or O Mundo Sportivo, take your pick, Rio’s first sports daily and the first magazine in Brazil dedicated to sports. Filho was the older brother of Nelson Rodriques, a controversial figure and arguably Brazil’s most famous playwright (he also wrote thousands of short stories as well as nine novels) who also worked on the magazine. Together the brothers revolutionised sports writing reporting in detail on matches and players using colloquial language. Nelson was the first to refer to Pelé as royalty (O Rei or the King). The magazine was short lived (it started in 1931 and was gone by 1932) whereupon Filho went to work for O Globo, the conservative flagship publication of Grupo Globo, Latin America’s largest mass media group. In 1934 he launched a competition between supporters of the local Flamengo and Fluminense football clubs. He encouraged fans to bring drums, instruments, coloured streamers, and fireworks to matches which he coined “Fla-Flu” in 1933 (see later) now probably Rio’s most glamorous derby and kicking off the colourful exuberance of Brazilian football supporters known the world over and seen at every major tournament in which Brazil plays.

 

Filho had quite a flair for originality, for he also created the first ever trans-Atlantic football competition, the Copa Rio played in 1951 and 1952, a kind of early club world cup with football clubs from South America and Europe. In 1942, before a match against Fluminense, Jayme de Carvalho, a public servant and fanatical Flamengo supporter, picked up where Filho left off and formed Charanga (meaning “out-of-tune band”) initially made up of 15 friends playing musical instruments on the terraces. From then on music accompanied football teams all over the country, and with his help the behaviour of Brazilian fans established itself as creative and theatrical. Later de Carvalho was head of Brazilian fans at the 1950, 1954, and 1966 World Cups, and remained in charge of Charanga until his death in 1976.

 

Construction of the giant Maracanã was slow, work quickly fell behind. In the end, with the World Cup deadline looming, they brought in an Italian administrator from the last World Cup in 1938 to get the job done, a man whose attachment to the Jules Rimet trophy was stronger than any other – he kept it under his bed for 12 years to hide it from the Germans. By the time the 1950 World Cup rolled around however, the Maracanã was in parts still a building site. Photos of the stadium taken at the final game of the 1950 World Cup (it wasn’t officially the “Final” as the tournament was settled by a second group stage but the last game, Brazil v Uruguay, was a final in all but name) reveal large parts of the upper tier swathed in scaffolding and there were still no toilets.

 

The World Cup was supposed to mark Brazil’s ascension to the top of world football. Brazil had home advantage and built the magnificent new stadium as a vast showcase for the national team’s expected victory. During the World Cup the Maracanã hosted eight matches with Brazil playing all their games at the stadium bar one (played in São Paulo with a team selected from that city). Brazil’s path to the final game was a triumphal procession. Their dominance on the field in the tournament was absolute and far beyond any of the other teams—scoring an incredible 23 goals in five games before the final match with Uruguay. The local press had already printed headlines for the next day proclaiming victory, medals for the entire team were made and even a song was composed and practised, ready to be played after the Final. It was said that 200,000 (history records it as just under that figure) crammed into the Maracanã on that historic Sunday afternoon in July 1950, a total that represented 10 percent of Rio’s entire population at the time.

 

Then disaster, Uruguay triumphed in a shock victory. A calamitous outcome and so profound was the impact they gave it a name—Maracanaço in Portuguese, roughly translated as “The Agony of Maracanã”—an event that has never been properly exorcised from the national psyche. The thing about sport but especially football, is it can be a spectacular journey around the emotions; it can be uplifting but also plummet the depths. After the match there were reported suicides among the general population. The Brazilian goalkeeper from that match, the much-maligned Moacir Barbosa, and the other non-white ones it must be said, were largely ostracised by society thereafter. When Barbosa turned up at Brazil’s 1994 World Cup training camp almost half-a-century later, he was still shunned as bad luck.

The players in the Final were not the only scapegoats. In the 1950 Final the Brazilians played in white shirts. So, in the 1958 Final against Sweden, who played in yellow, they opted for blue shirts rather than play in the “unlucky” kit and because, they reasoned, the World Cup, up to that point, had been won by teams in blue shirts on four of the five occasions, and in any case, blue was the colour of the Virgin Mary. Brazil’s famous yellow shirts (nicknamed “Cararinho” or the little canary birds), and arguably the world’s most iconic, were only worn for the first time in 1953 and at the World Cup for the first time in 1954, their creation being the winner of a competition to redesign the national shirts. A competition won by a Brazilian but one who, ironically enough, was a fan of Uruguay, the country that inflicted the defeat which caused the shirts to be reimagined in the first place.

 

Among Rio’s many football clubs four stand out for their success and popularity, the powerhouses of: Botafogo, Flamengo, Fluminense, and Vasco da Gama (or just Vasco). All except the Fluminense began life as rowing clubs, rowing being early on an elite sport in Rio. Football was then added later. Early on football in Brazil was played by well-to-do expatriates, mainly British, who would turn up to matches in dinner suits; locals, especially poor ones, weren’t invited. The burgeoning popularity of football in Brazil eventually led to more egalitarianism though black and coloureds faced racial barriers to their participation. Until the 1920s, black players were a rarity. Change came, dramatically, in 1923 when Vasco came from nowhere to win the Carioca (Rio) championship with a team of black and mixed-race players. In retaliation, the other big clubs formed a separate league and conspired to have Vasco banned. Vasco responded with a letter; the so-called “Historical Response” (Resposta Histórica) credited with revolutionising the practice of sports in Brazil. Eight years later change came, and the game went fully professional opening the way to the democratisation of football.

 

The Flamengo fanbase is estimated at 40 million, making them the most popular team in Brazil and in South America. Only Corinthians of São Paulo come close in popularity. The latter’s fanbase is called Fiel (“The Faithful”) and once sparked the so-called Corinthian Invasion of 1976 when 70,000 travelled to watch the match against Fluminense at the Maracanã in that year's national championship semi-finals, the largest number of away fans at a match in football history. Vasco (black and white with a distinctive diagonal stripe) although still the club of the Portuguese have a large black following too – linked to their pioneering introduction of black players. Botafogo (black and white vertical stripes) earned a reputation in the 1950s and 1960s as a team supported by intellectuals and the superstitious. Aside from Vasco, none of the other big Rio clubs own their stadiums, and their club grounds have been traditionally quite small. Fluminense’s ground, for instance, holds just 10,000, so big matches, like the local Rio derbies are played at the Maracanã to fit everyone in.

 

The biggest derby in Rio is the so-called Derby of Millions (Clássico dos Milhões) between the city’s two biggest clubs; Flamengo and Vasco, Rio’s second most popular club. It is considered one of the biggest rivalries in Brazilian football and in football worldwide. Rio’s most “glamourous” derby, or the bitterest, is Flamengo versus Fluminense (the so-called “Fla-Flu”) which goes back to 1912. So far, they have played more than 430 times with Flamengo the more successful. The world record attendance for a club match of 194,603 was for a Fla-Flu match in 1963 at the Maracanã. With his wit and verse, Nelson Rodriques was author of several phrases about the classic such as “Fla-Flu has no beginning. Fla-Flu has no end”. “Fla-Flu started forty minutes before nothing.” “And then the crowds woke up”. He also interpreted the relationship of Fla-Flu pointing to them as the Brothers Karamazov of Brazilian football, characters from the famous novel by Dostoevsky played as it was, against the background of a strong family rivalry.

 

Flamengo, with their distinctive broad red and black hoops, are the team of the people the so called “Rubro-Negro Nation”. In some cases, calling someone a “Flamenguista” can be seen as offensive because it can mean “slumdweller”. Another nickname for them is the Vultures (Urubu), portrayed as a caricature and seen at matches on flags (and on t-shirts), and because the bird is black, as are many of their fans. Flamengo, founded by a group of disaffected Fluminense players (reminiscent of the Merseyside split in 1892 that saw a group breakaway from Liverpool to form Everton), soon established itself as the best supported club for several reasons, though none are apparently conclusive. Some say its mass appeal comes from the late 1930s and early 1940s, when the club won titles with the most famous black stars of the era; Domingos da Guia, Leônidas da Silva (the Black Diamond, he scored 89 goals in 88 matches for the club and is credited with inventing the bicycle kick, chute de Bicicleta, so spectacular the referee on that day wasn’t sure it was legal) and Zizinho. Other possible reasons for Flamengo’s popularity are said to be their origins of playing on public land, and their pioneering of black and coloured players, albeit done in Vasco’s footsteps.

 

If Flamengo are the team of the masses, then, conversely Fluminense (burgundy, green and white stripes) are the team of the aristocracy. Fluminense was Rio’s first football club, founded by a Brazilian of English descent, Arthur Cox—their first manager was an Englishman, Charlie Williams, who had played for Arsenal—and have the nickname “Rice Powder” or Pó-de-Arroz (Fluzão or Big Flu, and Tricolour or Tricolor being others) because the club was one of the last to accept black players. Even after non-white players were fielded, some players used rice powder to make themselves appear lighter to appease the club’s fans, hence the tradition. That said these days most of their fans throw talcum powder instead. Their biggest rivals are Flamengo and the class divisions between the two sets of supporters can be heard in some of the chants. Urubu and Pó-de-Arroz started out as terms of abuse but were quickly adopted as badges of honour. Fluminense fans often direct “silencio na favela” (“shut up in the favela [slum]”) at Flamengo fans, especially if that team is losing.

 

What they also have in common is their allusion to race, the issue which goes to the heart of Brazilian society and which has undoubtedly been a key factor in the formation of Brazil’s distinctive brand of football. Brazil has more blacks than any country outside Africa. It was the American society that received the largest contingent of African slaves in the Americas and had the longest lasting slave regime in the Western Hemisphere. Forty percent (some estimates are nearer 50 percent) of the 10 African million slaves brought to the New World went to Brazil, and it was the last country in the Western world to abolish slavery (in 1888 by a royal decree containing just 18 words, the so-called “Golden Law” or Lei Áurea).

 

The wonder of Brazil, it has been surmised, that with such contrasting geography in the world’s fifth-largest country and with such a diverse population—as well as more blacks than any country outside Africa, it has more Japanese that any country outside Japan, as well as its indigenous Indians and large communities of northern and southern Europeans, Arabs and Jews—is that it hasn’t split asunder into its component parts. As one Brazilian sociologist has written ‘A country that has samba and capoeira, frevo and chorinho [samba musical styles] has to play a different kind of football.’ Football might unify Brazil, but it also illustrates its divisions of rich and poor, black (or non-white) and white. They go together but it also sets them apart and is played out in footballing rivalries like Fla-Flu.

 

By coincidence, the game I saw on 19 December 1991 was another Fla-Flu phenomenon, one of over 400 that have been played but that year was one of the most important given the state championship was at stake. I bought a ticket at the ticket booth outside the ground, which cost about USD10 and seemed quite a lot of money back then. Up the concourse from the train were two rows of police well-spaced and sporting various forms of weaponry, lethal and not so. Attached to them were large Doberman Pinschers, one of my least favourite dog breeds, thankfully on leashes, though looking capable of breaking free at any moment. Seemingly at random spectators were stopped and questioned, and their bags searched.

 

One of the biggest tips for tourists in Rio is to carry as little as possible and nothing of any value. As someone once said of being in Rio; you cannot buy much as you carry very little money, you can’t take any photos because you leave your camera at the hotel and you have no idea of the time, because you never wear your watch. What digital natives do now with thumb culture I’m unsure, but probably have their phones stolen. Once beyond the turnstile a long concrete ramp leads up to the stadium where finally, getting in is like a “near death experience” as one football writer said, as access is via narrow passageway at the end of which is a bright light.

 

The game didn’t kick-off until about 9:30pm. It was summertime in Rio, so it was hot, the city being south of the Equator. I thought it curious given the climate that football would be played at this time of year. Unlike neighbours Uruguay and Argentina, who play their football in winter, Brazilian football has so many competitions the game runs almost all year. There are state and regional leagues, the national cup, the cup of state champions and two South American cups. The rules for some of Brazil’s football competitions also change sometimes yearly, with some years more eccentric than others. The calendar is so complicated that some players go for years without taking a holiday.

 

I sat in a mass of people behind the samba band that played from before kick-off through to the end of the second half and time added on without stopping, what stamina. I have never been in a crowd of 65,000 in a stadium that was two-thirds empty. Given the seemingly endless football season, relentless frequency of matches, size of the stadiums and widespread poverty of many of the fans (Brazil having one of the greatest disparities of income in the world; 20 percent have a living standard found in sub-Saharan Africa, another 20 percent that of northern Europe) it’s hardly surprising that games can be played in front of less than capacity crowds. The rows of concrete terraces are wide enough for you to sit and have people still walk behind. I had something in a plastic bag – what you do carry in Rio you carry in something inconspicuous so as to not attract attention from thieves. I had it next to me but the Carioca (anyone or anything from Rio de Janeiro) also sitting there wisely motioned I should keep it covered least someone run by and snatch it (I had recently seen this done in Peru, but not to me).

 

Down below was another area for fans, the gallery (geral), the pitch-level area where the groundlings used to stand. This had to be closed down partly, it was believed, to put a stop to the phenomenon of arrastão (or dragnet), in which groups of young men would steam through the unsegregated crush, relieving fellow spectators of their money, jewellery, watches and any other items of value. Sadly, this too put an end to the taunting chant of other teams’ fans when playing Flamengo: “Au, au, au, Flamenguista, é na geral”, an allusion to the Flamenguista’s supposed poverty. Pre-match I noticed a police car, or what appeared to be one, driving around on the roof. Perhaps they were looking for people sitting up there. Then the players emerged into the giant arena, up through separate entrances on the pitch, next to the touchline, and the officials from yet another, like gladiators into the arena.

 

This was the match to decide the Carioca Championship. Flamengo played in their familiar red and black while rivals Fluminense in an “away” strip of white, not as spectacular as their home strip, the Tricolour. The game was the second leg of the final, the first having finished one-all, so the winner of the match would be champion of Rio state. Flamengo’s season had been significant as it was the first without their midfield playmaker and idol, Zico (dubbed the White Pelé, but then so was Tostão, a generation earlier) their best player in a generation and maybe arguably their best player ever, certainly in the modern era, who had left the club after two playing stints totalling 17 years. Flamengo that season was coached by Vanderlei Luxemburgo, who has coached over 30 clubs in a career spanning 40 years, including all the big clubs in Brazil, and later Real Madrid. Later he was embroiled in controversy as the national coach when Renata Alves, a woman finetuned in the art of self-publicity and with whom he’d been having a relationship, revealed (among other things) in Playboy (Brazil’s most popular monthly magazine) the level of sleaze permeating Brazilian football.

 

The game was lively. Flamengo applied all the pressure in the first half and had most of the possession, but it was Fluminense that scored first through Ézio (or Super- Ézio). One of the highlights from a spectator and neutral perspective was to see ex-Brazilian international Leovegildo Lins da Gama Júnior (also known as Leo Júnior or just Júnior) in action. With Zico moving to play in Japan, it was Júnior who led the young team. He first played for Flamengo in 1974 and finished up in his second spell with the club in 1993 making over 200 appearances for the Vultures in between spells in Italy and playing 74 times for the national team. Afterwards he managed the club, and later the giants of São Paulo, Corinthians.

 

Flamengo then equalised through midfielder Uidemar. The crowd urged Flamengo to give him the ball. After half-time Gaucho, the competition’s top scorer that year, scored a second for Flamengo, and the winger Zinho got a third. Ézio pulled a goal back for Fluminense before Júnior sealed the game with another goal for the Rubio-Negro (Scarlet and Black). It finished 4-2 to Flamengo who got bragging rights over their more upmarket neighbours. Fluminense’s cause wasn’t helped by having two players sent off, never a dull moment. With Júnior as the orchestrator, the young Flamengo side went on to win the Brazilian Championship the following year, beating another Rio rival, Botafogo, in the final.

 

By the time the match finished it was getting on towards midnight. The trains had stopped running. Getting back to the hotel was going to be a problem. I knew the name of the hotel and where it was but not how to get there. Outside the stadium were a line of buses. I got on one. I sat there for a while and then a group of Flamengo supporters in fine voice got on. They started jumping up and down on the seats and banging on the roof. The driver didn’t move or say anything. Neither did I. It seemed better to sit down the back of the bus and keep quiet, to be invisible. Too late, I was spotted, and the group edged closer. The windows were all open so I thought if things got heated, I could just jump out Fortunately for my nerves the bus then departed for parts unknown. There I was on a bus near midnight in a city I didn’t know going who knows where, and knowing anywhere after dark was likely not safe.

 

After a spell I decided to get off the bus near a flyover where a taxi was parked on a traffic island in the middle of an intersection. The taxi, the ubiquitous Volkswagen Beetle—one of the 3 million made in Brazil over 30 years—was driven by a wannabe racing driver. One thing I noticed about public transport drivers in Brazil, especially in Rio, was that they all wanted to emulate Emerson Fittapaldi. Their idea of driving was to reach top speed as fast as possible before coming to a stop in top gear by slamming on the brakes in spectacular fashion. Bus drivers did this even if they were only going to a stop 100m away. So there I was, hurtling through the deserted streets of Rio de Janeiro on my way, I hoped, to the hotel in Glória, located next to the suburb appropriately enough, of Flamengo. Nearby Glória Hill there was once a village of the Tupi people called Karioca where the modern demonym of the city ‘Carioca’ is derived. About 20 minutes later I arrived in a screeching halt at the hotel’s front door. A rip-roaring end to a great evening, one of the most impressive sporting highlights I’ve ever experienced in one of the world’s most iconic venues in one of the most spectacular cities.

 

In 1960, upon his death, the Maracanã was renamed Estádio Jornalista Mário Rodrigues Filho, for the stadium’s advocate and a man who had much influence on sport in Brazil. The venue has seen attendances of 150,000 or more at 26 occasions, the last being on 29 May 1983, when 155,253 spectators watched Flamengo beat Santos, 3–0, and crowds of more than 100,000 have occurred 284 times. Over time the terraces have been replaced by seats, and the capacity reduced. It has also hosted other events including some of the biggest rock concerts. Artists who have performed there range from the Rolling Stones to Frank Sinatra. Norwegian boy band A-Ha attracted 198,000 (who’d have thought) while 175,000 turned out to see Sinatra. Rock bands and other acts have attracted over 180,000 on many occasions. Pope John Paul II held mass there three times and 95,000 people once turned up to watch volleyball, a world record for the sport.

 

Later, in 2007, the Maracanã hosted the XV Pan-American Games. Then it was redeveloped for the 2014 World Cup which included modernising some of its features to satisfy FIFA and a new roof design, one that appeared to be almost floating. The good thing about the new roof, aside from being stronger, was it now covered 95 percent of the spectators, unlike the former design, which left most exposed. Then came the 2016 Olympics where the Maracanã hosted the opening and closing ceremonies and the football matches.

 

Once the new Maracanã was completed capacity was reduced to a mere 78,838, still the largest stadium in use in Brazil and second largest in South America after the Estadio Monumental in Peru. It certainly looks like it’s been spruced up now and captures a nationalistic flavour with the new seats coloured yellow, blue, and white, which combined with the green of the pitch, form the Brazilian national colours. But the transformation is a tragedy, described as an act of architectural vandalism and transformed one of the largest and most beautiful stadiums on the planet into a parody of its former self. The sinuous two-tiered elliptical structure has been gutted and replaced with an off-the-shelf single-tier stand rammed into the space. The original roof, formerly the crowning glory of the building, was illegally demolished and has been replaced by what David Goldblatt described as a ‘pathetic concoction of scaffolding, canopies and big screens that obscures what is left of the stadium’s shape. The changes were just part of a huge programme of urban rebuilding characteristic of global sporting mega events. In the case of the Maracanã, the publicly owned stadium and its surrounding public sports facilities were refurbished with public money only to be passed to the private sector to profit from them.

 

Later, in 2021 the Rio de Janeiro state legislature voted to change the venue’s name again to another mouthful, the Edson Arantes do Nascimento – Rei Pelé Stadium, Rei being Portuguese for ‘King’, though apparently the man himself never liked being called that. He had scored his 1000th professional goal (dubbed O Milésimo) in the stadium in November 1969 playing for Santos against Vasco, with even their fans cheering him. But the popular name and the one everyone uses, and the one I know it by, is the Maracanã. It even sounds spectacular.

 

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HVJ8SuUkcbc

 

Thanks mainly to:
Alex Bellos; Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life
Chris Taylor; The Beautiful Game
David Goldblatt; The Age of Football
Garry Jenkins; The Beautiful Team – In Search of Pelé and the 1970 Brazilians
Rio de Janeiro.