Tuesday, Jul. 01, 2008

U.S. has nothing

Imagine having the Super Bowl a half-dozen times a year. Six sporting events that the entire country gets together and watches and then dissects around the water cooler the next day.

That’s what it’s like in Brazil whenever the national soccer team plays. I spent two weeks there recently, seeing the sights and going to my college roommate’s wedding in Rio de Janeiro. It’s hard to overstate the mania that accompanies each national team soccer game in Brazil.

Here in the United States we have an incredible variety of popular sports. In Brazil, it’s pretty much soccer, soccer and soccer, with volleyball and motor sports coming in a distant second.

I was fortunate enough to be in Brazil when the national team played in World Cup qualifiers against Paraguay and Argentina. These were important games, and all the Brazilians I met seemed excited about them even though two of their brightest stars, Ronaldinho and Kaka, wouldn’t be able to play.

Even with my limited knowledge of Portuguese, it was easy to start up a conversation with the Brazilians I met in the days leading up to the games just by mentioning a few of the players. All the newspapers hanging in the street corner kiosks featured big, full-color soccer spreads, not only on the front of the sports page, but on the cover of the news section as well.

I watched the games at my roommate’s parents’ apartment, where his father apologized beforehand for having satellite TV. There was a slight delay on the satellite feed, he explained, so we would know if Brazil scored a goal before we actually saw it because we would hear the cheering and honking of car horns from the street. Crazy.

Unfortunately, I never got to experience this phenomenon of simultaneous, communal cheering. The Brazilians watched, shellshocked, as their squad lost 2-0 to Paraguay. Three days later the national team could manage only a 0-0 draw against hated Argentina.

Despite the lackluster results, soccer was still the talk of Rio in the days after the Argentina game with the focus falling on the shortcomings of national team coach Dunga. Coaches in the United States are under a lot of scrutiny, but it’s nothing compared with having kiosks full of national newspapers calling for their heads, which is what Dunga faced.

The passion for soccer in Brazil is working against Dunga at the moment, but overall it’s exciting because it binds the whole country together. Young or old, man or woman, everyone follows the national team, and therefore everyone has a common interest and something to talk about.

It’s like the Super Bowl in America — except that it’s not about the commercials or the halftime show. It’s about the game, and it happens six times this year instead of one.

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