I’ve never been much of a sports guy so it’s no wonder that a big part of Brazilian culture boggles me. For the last 6 weeks I’ve been living in a república, a shared apartment for students (except this particular place is mostly rented by people who graduated several years ago). They are all, without exception, big soccer fans. The television is almost always on and almost always tuned to a soccer game or a program geared towards soccer fans, of which there are many. When that isn’t going on, the guys are talking about what? Soccer. When a game is on, their soccer buddies come over and when their team scores, it’s as if they just won a new Mercedes!
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When the news of the ‘new car’ reaches their brain, they run to the window and yell out the name of their team. I usually joke that one doesn’t even need to watch soccer since all it takes is having ears in order to know who scored. Things can get ‘heated’ when someone from the losing team, who lives in the same or neighboring apartment complex, hears their team being insulted by a fan of the winning team. These insults often end up being about the mother of one of the fans but it never lasts too long since the game is all important and ends up winning back the attention of the fans.
My personal view is that it’s all “bread and circuses” for the people to be diverted (hence the word diversão) from being political. It’s not that sports are a necessarily a bad influence but I find the focus here to be extreme and unbalanced. Right now as I’m finishing up this article, the regular news is gorging itself with the coverage of Fluminense football club having won the Brasileirão championship.
One thing I’ll give the fans, though…they understand passion.
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Brazil & Brazilians are all Soccer crazy peoples. It’s great time to be there in Brazil & watching a Soccer game. I am a huge spectator of Brazil’s national soccer time.