THAT EMBRACE
Jack Lang went in search of the shimmying soul of Brazilian football. He found it in the country’s warm, funny and mysterious way of talking about the game
IHAD been in Teresópolis, Rio de Janeiro state, for two days and already I was running out of things to do. School children ambled between shops whose wares they must have known by heart. In the sleepy town square, old men gathered to play dominoes and chat, whiling away the hours under a winter sun rendered impotent by altitude.
There is a mountain trail that weaves through a jungle before coming up for air above the canopy, eventually scrambling up one of the mountains that flank the town. You can almost see Rio itself from the summit; almost feel its sands between your freezing toes.
The youth of Teresópolis migrate to the city during the school holidays to escape their parents and the cold. Eventually, even the tasty steaks, breads and fine local beers of the town lost their charm. I found myself wishing I could play footie with someone.
There was a grass pitch just outside the house in which I was stay- ing. It was well kept, even if its dimensions were distinctly unorthodox. I went to the pitch one day, ball in hand, hopeful of meeting someone — anyone — who might fancy a game. No one showed. Few of life’s frustrations can compare to that of the lone footballer.
But I was told a group of men played on Sunday mornings, so I tried my luck again. Sure enough, the town’s husbands, uncles and probably the odd grandfather moseyed onto the field. I attracted a few bemused glances but was welcomed into the fold. The standard was good, despite the encyclopaedia of beer bellies adorning my new friends.
I started in goal (first rule of the pick-up game: pay your dues) but they dragged me out when they realised I’m prone to risky dribbles (second rule: an unreliable goalkeeper gets to play outfield). Someone muttered something about Rogério Ceni, the reckless, freescoring 41-year-old keeper.
Soon, though, they were calling me something else. It started with a jovial, greying midfielder whose words I couldn’t quite make out. Another teammate took the baton, and before long even players on the other side were giggling over my new alias.
When I finally understood what they were saying, I smiled. Apparently, with my blond hair I look Swiss or Belgian. They were calling
Portuguese, as spoken by Brazilians, is a squelchy, elastic language, full of music
me “Häagen-Dazs”.
Amid the Fifa-approved images of soccer stars in sun-drenched stadiums, much of what truly defines Brazilian football will be concealed, lost in translation. Neymar, Thiago Silva et al represent one aspect of this nation’s continuing clout in the sport, but there is another sphere in which it excels. No other nation can match the verve with which Brazil talks and writes about o jogo bonito.
Portuguese, as spoken by Brazilians, is a squelchy, elastic language, full of music. Before hearing it, I had assumed it would sound like Spanish — rolled Rs, machine-gun-fast delivery — but the reality is different. It is, to the untrained ear, far more exotic, with almost Eastern European inflections, at once soothing and percussive.
The language and its use hold a mirror to Brazilian society, reflecting its nuances and embellishing them. Nowhere is this more true than in religion. The vernacular is peppered with phrases like “God willing” and “God be with you”, which echo a deeply entrenched faith in higher powers. Occasionally this is obscured by slangy usage — the expression “nossa” (literally “our”), for example, which indicates surprise or embarrassment, is a derivation of “Nossa Senhora,” a reference to “our lady” Mary.
But if religious beliefs have shaped the way Brazilians express themselves, football, as ever, is not far behind. This is a country in which the game and the words that describe it are engaged in permanent dialogue — jostling for position, conceding ground, stretching and then snapping back in reconciliation.
This is perhaps most obvious in the technicolor nicknames. From the most modest kick-arounds on dusty quadras to professional matches, football in Brazil is accompanied by a dizzying list of intricate pseudonyms and references to cloudy, half-forgotten stories.
At times, nicknames are practical solutions. Like family grievances, Brazilian names swell and mutate through the generations, meaning it is not uncommon to encounter someone called Luís Eduardo Filho da Costa Drummond Neves, or Yuri Afonso da Silva Santos Júnior. Official names can be cumbersome and hard to memorise; nicknames are nimble and stick in the mind.
Some players go by mere shortenings of their full names or have nicknames grounded in fairly quotidian tales, but necessity alone does not explain the sheer variety on offer.
The nicknames of many of Brazil’s greatest players have become well-known: Pelé (itself a nickname, grounded in his childhood mispronunciation of Bilé, a goalkeeper who played with his father) was and will forever be o Rei (the King); Jairzinho earned the moniker Furacão da Copa (Hurricane of the World Cup) after his exploits at Mexico 1970; O
Fenômeno , the original Ronaldo, lived up to his name in the same competition in 1998 and 2002.
Some are less explicitly reverential. Romário, the pesky, bullish striker who made USA ’94 his own, is best known as Baixinho (Shorty). Flamengo idol Zico, meanwhile, was thought to strut around like a little rooster, leading commentator Waldir Amaral to label him Galinho. “It just stuck,” said the player last year. “Even now, people I’ve never met come up to me in the street and say ‘Hey Rooster, how’s it going?’ There’s no point trying to change it.”
He should spare a thought for Flávio Augusto do Nascimento, a striker for Santa Cruz who goes by the handle Flávio Caça-Rato — Flávio the Rat-Catcher. “When I was younger, I was scared to play with the big boys, so I’d stay on the sidelines and chase rats,” he said recently. “The name caught on. My mum didn’t really like it at first, but she’s fine with it these days.”
Details that would otherwise be ephemeral are celebrated and absorbed into the footballing lexicon, preserved for the ages. Things tend to get even more abstruse once you stray from the hall of fame. There are Tarzans and Pikachus, Tom Thumbs and Possessed Ones, Little Gold Heads and Spiders. And the odd Häagen-Dazs.
There is great creativity at work here. But what helps such names take flight is the pleasing familiarity that defines Brazilian society. It’s the first thing you notice when you arrive: new acquaintances greet you like long-lost friends, slapping you on the back or kissing you on the cheeks.
Gilberto Gil may have been thinking specifically of Rio when he sang of the human warmth of Aque
le Abraço (That Embrace), but it applies to the whole population. People actively — if subconsciously — knock down barriers to intimacy straight off the bat. The act of renaming is a manifestation of this.
Like family grievances, names swell & mutate over generations
Yet the poetry of football in Brazil is not limited to nicknames. Indeed, much of the most memorable linguistic play is employed to describe the action on the pitch — from the most simple gestures to flicks, tricks and fancy.
I got my first taste of this in Lyon, France, where I played five-a-side games with expatriate Brazilians and first began to pick up Portuguese. Naturally, the first few words that stuck were swearwords, but with patience I graduated to a hazy understanding of the on-field code used by Brazilian players — the whistles, telling glares and, of course, the jargon built of allusion and simile.
A couple of Paulistas — both of whom would, without fail, share a joint before playing, ostensibly to encourage the creative juices — became de facto guides to various manoeuvres, and had the skill to pull most of them off. Bruninho specialised in the
chapéu (hat): lifting the ball over a defender’s head before collecting it on the other side. You knew he’d got you when you heard him giggling with joy even before the ball had reached its apex.
Japa preferred to kick the ball on the floor past the defender on one side and run round the other. This is known as the “cow dribble”; the term originated in rural games featuring cattle as obstacles.
Stadium supporters are masters of the withering metaphor. A bad player isn’t just a bad player but a
perna de pau— a wooden leg. When a goalkeeper fails to keep out a shot, he might be labelled mão de alface — lettuce hand. A bad fumble is a
frango (chicken), after an animal that is far harder to catch than a ball.
Some TV commentators have made a career out of introducing esoteric sayings, perhaps none more so than Sílvio Luiz. Now 79 but still on air, his eccentricity has enchanted and infuriated viewers in equal measure. “He’s put that where the owl sleeps!” you may hear him giggle when a shot flies into the top corner, before he labels the linesman’s flag a “flannel” or refers to a slippery ball as a “buttered child”.
A few of his phrases are legendary. His puzzling insistence that “the sauce is ruined!” punctuated the 1998 World Cup, and his call for viewers to sync their watches with his at kick-off is a common refrain. More bafflingly, he once speculated before a women’s game: “By the smell of the mortadella, it’s going to be 6-0 to Brazil.” No one seems to know what he meant. In these expressions resides the pleasing mysticism that surrounds football in Brazil.
While the thrust of the culture of nicknames is towards familiarity, the web of analogy and lore is wilfully impenetrable, defined through verbal chicanery that only an insider can hope to understand. Case in point: the use of the word “zebra” to describe a surprise re-
‘By the smell of the mortadella, it’s going to be 6-0 to Brazil’
sult. This comes from the informal (and clandestine) lottery known as
jogo do bicho (animal game), in which there are 25 numbers, each associated with a different animal. Zebra isn’t on the list, so the chances of that number coming up are pretty slim — much like the chances of a third-division club beating Corinthians.
The language of the game in Brazil is hieroglyphic, excluding the world from the hinterland it represents. (Not that entry is hard to come by; if you’ve ever met a Brazilian, you’ll know that the notion that they would consciously alienate anyone at all is laughable. Just ask, and you will be taught.)
With its golden colour palette and the intuitive, freewheeling style of its stars, Brazil has brought great joy to football since discovering it in 1894. The resourcefulness of the nation is echoed in the way they play the game — the concept of malandragem (street smarts, roughly) resounds through futebol history. Brasileiros always find a way, poking the ball unexpectedly when in a fix or producing sublime skill out of nothing.
This is especially noticeable in the informal game. I once played with a chuckling, inventive forward who, at throw-ins, would deliberately hurl the ball at the turned backs of defenders before collecting
A bad fumble is a frango (chicken), after an animal that is far harder to catch than a ball
it himself. It also holds true at professional level: witness Ronaldo’s goal against Turkey in the 2002 World Cup, or Ronaldinho’s staggering strike for Barcelona against Chelsea in the Champions League, both of which elevated the humble toe punt to an art form.
These days, Brazil’s leagues creak under the weight of political plotting, poor planning and shaky finances. Fixture congestion, caused by sprawling, low-wattage state championships that occupy five months of every year, takes its toll on players who are often paid their salaries late, even at big clubs. Attendances pale in comparison to those of the major European leagues. Short-termism abounds, with managers often sacked to appease impatient supporters. Violence explodes on the terraces.
It is arguably only in the poetry of the sport that Brazil continues to lead the way, barrelling forward with the kind of conviction that began to desert the seleção in the early 1980s. In this of all years, that charming verbal patrimony deserves to be celebrated. ©Roads and
Kingdoms