“Everywhere has its irremediable national catastrophe, something like a Hiroshima. Our catastrophe, our Hiroshima was the defeat by Uruguay in 1950.”  Nelson Rodrigues, Brazilian journalist.

As evident in the quote above, the Brazilians can never be accused of under-stating the importance of the beautiful game. Today in 1950 saw possibly the biggest upset in international football history, a match that still scars the Brazilian consciousness to this day.

One would have thought that the 50 years of spellbinding football and five World Cup wins that followed the “Fateful Final” would’ve helped the Seleção Brasileira in it’s healing process (lord knows it would have if we were talking about the England team), but that is simply not the case.

Brazil saw the 1950 World Cup as a chance to assert themselves on the world stage as a nation with a great future. National pride was swelling, as in 1946 ten years of dictatorship was ended and democracy was embraced and Brazil was given the right to host the first post-war World Cup. In 1948 work began on the Maracanã, which was to be the biggest stadium in the world, with a 183,000 capacity. 10,000 labourers ensured that the stadium was built in record time (fancy that national-stadium fans), and Brazil’s date with destiny was set.

On June 24th the 13-team tournament kicked off, using a unique format that has been seen since, that involved two group phases and no actual knockout games, where the winners of second group would be crowned world champions. Fate conspired to ensure that everything came down to the final game of the tournament, where Brazil only needed to draw to secure their first Jules Rimet trophy.



To say that the nation press, and the nation as a whole were confident of victory was a bit of an understatement: “Tomorrow we will beat Uruguay!” and “These are the World Champions” were just two of the tub-thumping headlines. With well over 200,000 present in the Maracanã there was an unfathomably intense atmosphere, with Uruguay midfielder Julio Perez even admitting to wetting himself during the national anthem. “I am not ashamed of this” he would later claim. Things didn’t get much better for Perez and his team-mates once the match started, as they would go a goal down just after half-time, with Friaça becoming the first and so far only Brazilian to score a World Cup final goal in the Maracanã, a dream of any Brazilian man or child. The stadium was in raptures, but this was tempered in the 66th minute, when Schiaffino equalized. 1-1 was still enough for the Brazilians, but then disaster struck when Ghiggia’s near post shot caught Brazilian keeper Barbosa by surprise and snuck in, handing Uruguay their second World Cup and breaking millions of hearts across Brazil. Jules Rimet remarked that the silence that fell across the Maracanã “was morbid, sometimes too difficult to bear”. Suicides were reported and many of the players were lambasted for the rest of their lives over the defeat. Goalkeeper Barbosa in particular was blamed for the winning goal. Before he died, penniless in 2000, he remarked that “Under Brazilian law the maximum sentence is thirty years. But my imprisonment has been fifty.”

See footage of what the Argentineans gloatingly refer to as the Maracanazo and an awful lot of grown men crying below.

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