How Brazilian football hit rock bottom

Even if you don't follow football, you probably recognize this jersey. It belongs to Brazil, arguably the most football-obsessed country in the world, and definitely the most successful. The Brazilian men's national team is the only team to have appeared in all 22 World Cups, and the only one to win it five times. That's how this jersey ended up everywhere, and how this team became a symbol of Brazil. But ask a Brazilian today about this team, and you're unlikely to hear much praise. It's not fun to watch. It's not entertaining. I have very fond memories of like the 2002 World Cup. I think it's been downhill from there. So many things need to be rethinked, and I don't see the signs for it right now. Now, Brazil is in a bit of a rut. It failed to advance past the quarterfinals in the last two World Cups. And Brazil are left heartbroken. And since 2022, has fallen from first to fifth in FIFA's rankings. But while reporting this story, I heard that the problems are about more than just losing. So I wanted to find out what made the Brazilian national team so successful, and why Brazilians today are falling out of love with them. All right, so if you've seen some of our previous videos about football, the animation in this one is going to look familiar. In the early 1900s, there were already lots of people playing football in Brazil. They were forming clubs, but only let in certain kinds of people. Upper class white Brazilians who could afford to play as unpaid amateurs. They played football the proper way, with coaches, positions, and on football fields that they kept to themselves. They didn't allow poor working class Brazilians, most of whom were black or mixed race, to play. But many still did. They held pickup games in streets and empty lots instead, with makeshift goals and balls. These confined spaces led them to create a new style of playing. In the roots of football in Brazil, you had to improvise even to play football. This is Eduardo de Conto, a reporter covering football in Brazil. You start to play around with your friends in the street, and be creative, and try to find solutions to beat your friends in the games. Those solutions took inspiration from aspects of black Brazilian culture. Slow, rhythmic dribbling moves resembled samba, a Brazilian dance. Juggling and volley kicks resembled capoeira, a type of martial art popular in Brazil. People began calling it samba football, or the beautiful game. Eduardo called it... That's a term inspired by the work of a Brazilian sociologist, who argued that Brazil's mix of cultures and people would produce a more creative style of football that would be distinctly Brazilian. But at first, the players that embodied this style weren't allowed to play for the clubs, meaning they were rarely among the players picked to play for the Brazilian national team, which was known as the seleção, or the selected. Here they are at the First World Cup in 1930, where after two games, they were knocked out. Things started to change, though, when a club named Vasco da Gama won the Rio de Janeiro Championship in 1923. The club included non-white and working-class players, and even paid some of them. Their victory spurred other players to follow their example, and by the 1930s, most were paying working-class Brazilians to play. Suddenly, these players could make a living playing football, and their unique style and talent made them stars. Leonidas da Silva grew up in a working-class neighborhood in Rio before becoming one of the most prized players in the Brazilian club league. He was nicknamed the rubber man for his elasticity, and may have invented this bicycle kick. He made the seleção for the 1938 World Cup, where he scored more goals than any player, and led Brazil to the semifinals. As more working-class players like him made it onto the clubs and the seleção, more Brazilians got to watch them play. By 1950, Brazilians had fallen so far in love with football that they hosted the World Cup. Brazil easily made it to the finals, but tragically lost to Uruguay. It was hugely traumatic and a step back for Brazilian football. Many blamed the seleção's black goalkeeper for the loss. But Brazil would recover. They arrived at the next World Cup with new bright yellow jerseys that matched their flag. Then in 1958, they brought a 17-year-old player from a poor neighborhood in Sao Paulo named Pele. He would use this Brazilian style to conquer the football world. All right, before we get into Brazil's golden era, I do want to welcome all of you who are new. We are Search Party. We cover sports and geopolitics. If you're new to that kind of thing, please consider subscribing. We launched about a year ago, and it's been an incredibly rewarding experience since then. But it's also been quite a lot of work, and I'll be the first to tell you there have been moments where I'm overwhelmed with stress and anxiety. It can be hard to talk about, but for me, the solution is always super, super simple. It's just to talk to someone. Talking to someone just puts the right amount of distance between me and what I'm worried about, and it puts me in a position to begin to deal with it. That's why I'm really proud to work with the sponsor of this week's video. That's BetterHelp, because they understand exactly that. BetterHelp connects you with a licensed therapist who's trained to listen and give helpful and unbiased advice, and they made it very easy to start. Go to betterhelp.com slash search party and answer a few questions. Usually within 48 hours, they'll match you with a professional with years of experience working with people who are struggling with similar things. Then you can chat with them via phone, via video call, or message, whatever you're most comfortable with. I really genuinely do recommend you give BetterHelp a shot. They made it very easy. betterhelp.com slash search party, or just use search party at the login and get a special discount on your first month. Thanks again to BetterHelp for supporting search party. Now I want to show you exactly how Brazil won its first World Cup. This is the 1958 World Cup final between Brazil and Sweden. Sweden's style was very common for teams at that time. Their players are organized in fixed positions to create rigid formations. But Brazil uses creativity to overwhelm them. They had positions, but by trading them and improvising, they confused the Swedish defenders. By challenging them head-on with dribbling tricks, they create scoring chances. And finish them in style. Here's Pelé's second goal, which sealed Brazil's first World Cup championship. Two more in 1962 and 70 would mark Brazilian football's golden era. And by winning with players from all across Brazilian society, and with a distinctly Brazilian style, they became a symbol of Brazilian identity. One of the first for a country that was still developing. Yes, we are a poor country, but we have joy. We love this. We love the ball. We love football. And we bring this passion that we have in life to football. In a moment of time where people didn't have much joy in their lives because of the social problems in Brazil, you had always the national team has escaped. We were winning, having an international recognition. So that became like an unstoppable wave. But as the sport began to change, the Celso had to change with it. In the 1980s, football was quickly becoming a lucrative business. Thanks largely to growing TV contracts, clubs in European leagues earned by far the most money, and began scouring the globe for players to spend it on. Naturally, they started signing Brazilians, and were willing to pay top dollar for one on the Celso. After Romário scored the most goals at the 88 Olympics, he was signed by a Dutch team, then by Spanish heavyweight FC Barcelona for 12 million euros. In 89, Alder signed with a Portuguese club, then an Italian one for 9 million. Then a young player named Ronaldo made the Celso. In 1994, they won Brazil's fourth World Cup, and even though he didn't play, he signed to a Dutch team for 5.5 million euros, where he flourished. He signed next with Barcelona for a world record 15 million, then finally to Inter Milan for another world record 26.5 million euros. Football players were becoming some of Brazil's most valuable exports, and business was booming. In 2002, Brazil won a fifth World Cup, with 11 out of its 23 players coming from European clubs. At the next World Cup, the number jumped to 20 out of 23. And many people began feeling like they were playing more like Europeans. In this 2006 quarterfinals match, Brazilian players are in a much more rigid and defensive structure than they were in Pelé's era, and although they displayed the same flashes of creativity, they were dribbling a lot less. After they lost this game, many in the media called it the end of the beautiful game. A Brazilian newspaper said that they played without the Brazilian way of playing. By moving to European clubs, Brazilian players were having to learn European tactics, which left less room for creativity. Eduardo thinks the Salazar were changing their style because they had to. Football became a much more physical sport, so you don't have much space to create anymore. If you watch the matches, like Pelé, the defenders were really hard on him, but he had space to run, to dribble. It sounds like if Brazil was to suddenly play like Pelé did, it just simply wouldn't work anymore. I don't think anybody can play like that. While the Salazar moved away from a distinct Brazilian style, its players spent less time in Brazil. In the 2010s, European clubs began signing players as early as 18 years old, leaving only a year or two for Brazilian fans to see them play there. Once they made the Salazar, they were often world famous, but Brazilians didn't feel quite the same connection. You have that identification, but you don't have that bond that forms when you see the player many, many times in the stadium and you cheer for him. These changes were driven by the globalization of football, and were in many ways out of Brazil's control. The problem was, the Salazar were losing. They lost in the quarterfinals of the 2010 World Cup, then in 2014, while hosting the tournament, this happened. Everyone in Brazil remembers when they were. So it was just like, go, and go, and go. Brazil are being humiliated. I was being like, oh my God, what is happening? I was so mad that I started to scream at the TV. My wife, she was so scared that she never wanted to talk about football anymore. It's a humiliation. It was almost the worst defeat in World Cup history, and it happened to all teams Brazil, in Brazil. It's like the trauma that really crystallized this feeling of distancing yourself from the national team. Many fans drifted further away after Brazil was knocked out of the 2018 and 2022 World Cups, but their feelings aren't just about these losses. Today, the Salazar don't have many players that play in Brazil, and they don't play a style that many feel is uniquely Brazilian. That distinct identity is what many fans miss. I think that the team has lost the, you know, collective spirits that they had. This Joga Bonito, like, they had an amazing capability that you do not see anymore in the current players. I never thought in that sense that we lost something, but I believe, yes, that we did. Now, the Salazar are in danger of becoming a symbol of Brazil's divisions. Bad times in Brazil. A political crisis drags down the economy. It's been described as the world's biggest corruption scandal. Over the past decade, Brazil has struggled through several economic crises, and it's contributed to a growing political divide there. In 2018, they elected a far-right politician named Jair Bolsonaro, who many feel unfairly used the iconic yellow jersey as a symbol of this movement. Now it's seen by many as divisive. Support for Bolsonaro by some Salazar players pushed the team further into the political divide. Bringing fans back will be difficult, but it is possible. Salazar might just need a spark. Maybe a new player. A beautiful goal. Or best of all, a win. Keep commenting. Keep sending me story ideas. And if you're new here, please consider subscribing. We also have memberships. All the information you need is in the description below. We're going to move on in two weeks to the next biggest sports event this year, and that's the Olympics. So look out for two Olympic videos. The first one's coming in about two weeks, and then the other one's two weeks after that. All right, everyone. Thanks so much. See you soon.