Many years after the horrific summer of 1950 in Rio de Janeiro – when the Brazilian National Team was defeated by Uruguay 2-1 in the deciding game of the World Cup at Estádio Maracanã – the goalkeeper from that 1950 Brazilian squad was waiting on line at the grocery store when a young woman approached. She recognized him with a look of disgust, and remarked aloud to her son “This man disgraced Brazil.”* It was one of the many examples of what life was like for Barbosa after that fateful day known to Brazilians as Maracanazo: one of the most shocking upsets in the history of sports, and a game that will live in infamy in the soccer-obsessed nation of Brazil; a day that is truly considered a national embarrassment.
The 1950 World Cup was a rather small tournament. World War II forced the 1942 and 1946 competitions to be cancelled so the 1950 edition was the first in 12 years. The first World Cup in 1930 was played in Uruguay, but the best European teams did not participate. In return the best South American teams did not attend the next two World Cups of 1934 and 1938 which were held in Italy and France respectively. In 1950 tensions between the two best footballing regions had ceased, but the world was still reeling from the war and once again a lot of the top contenders were unwilling to attend. Some nations were too ravaged by the war (France) or under heavy financial restraints (Turkey) or simply didn’t want to make the two week trip by ship (India) or were commies and refused to come (Russia, Czechoslovakia, Hungary) or hated Brazil and refused to attend just to say fuck you (Argentina) or were banned (Germany and Japan.) The organizers of the tournament had trouble finding 13 teams to compete. With home-field advantage and only two powerhouse European teams to contend with (England and two-time defending champions Italy) Brazilians expected nothing less than an easy victory.
Around this time a goalkeeper named Moacir Barbosa Nascimento was rising to prominence in Rio de Janeiro for club team Vasco da Gama. He helped his club win trophies at every level from Rio Cups to the Brazilian League to the tournament that was the precursor to Copa Libertadores (a tournament of the best South American club teams.) When called up to the Brazilian National Team he kept on winning championships, keeping a clean sheet in a 7-0 destruction of Paraguay in the 1949 Copa America Final. Even in the tournament that would brand him as the goat and “the man who made Brazil cry” in 1950, he only allowed six goals in the six World Cup matches, and kept two clean sheets.
To say Brazil dominated most of the 1950 World Cup would be a gross understatement. They won their first five matches by a combined score of 21-4. Superstar striker Ademir scored a ridiculous eight goals in those five games, including four in a 7-1 rout of Sweden. They were an absolute juggernaut.
The 1950 World Cup was arranged differently than the one today. Mainly, there were no knockout rounds. There were four groups to start, with the winners of each making a four-team final group. So the whole tournament basically played out like the group stage of the first round today, and there was no final game. Brazil breezed through their first two games of the final round by a combined score of 13-2. Meanwhile Uruguay struggled through the final group, needing a late goal from their captain Obdulio Varela just to secure a draw with Spain – a team Brazil smashed 6-1. The Uruguayans made another comeback in their next game, getting two goals from Óscar Míguez in the final 13 minutes to sneak out a 3-2 win over Sweden – whom Brazil had earlier thrashed 7-1. All that was needed from Seleção (the nickname of the Brazilian National Team, translation: The Selection) was a win or a draw versus Uruguay in their last match and Brazil would be crowned champions of the world.
On July 16, Brazilians awoke and by all accounts began celebrating a victory that was surely to come, and why shouldn’t they? After annihilating everyone they played in the tournament, how would the seemingly far-inferior Uruguayan side be able to defeat Brazil in Maracanã, the world’s largest soccer cathedral? It held approximately 174,000 but for this game there were upwards of 200,000 in attendance – the largest crowd to ever witness a soccer match. Brazil had the greatest home-field advantage any team has ever had, and it seemed they didn’t even need it. A Carnival float was ready to parade the team around Rio to celebrate their impending championship. Before the match the mayor of Rio came over the loudspeaker for a pep-talk and ended by saying “I already salute (you) as champions!” Also before the match the team was presented with gold watches engraved with “For the World Champions.” Music played as people danced and drank in the streets. The stadium was full of revelers hours before the match started. The morning of the game a newspaper called O Mundo printed a picture of the team with the headline “These are the World Champions!” Another paper called Gazeta Esportiva boasted “We will beat Uruguay!” (Before the game Uruguayan captain Obdulio Varela bought as many copies as he could find, took them back to his hotel, lined his shower floor with the newspapers – and promptly urinated all over them. He then encouraged the rest of his teammates at the hotel to do the same.) The president of FIFA even prepared his trophy presentation speech in Portuguese, himself sure of the outcome everyone thought to be inevitable.
For the final match in 1950 Brazil wore their traditional home uniforms – all white. It would be the last time they would dress in that fashion, never again wearing an all-white kit so as to never be forced to remember Maracanazo. Today Seleção is known for their yellow shirt with green trim, blue shorts, and white socks – so colorful it is an obvious attempt to look nothing like the original uniform. The first man out of the tunnel was Barbosa – one of the best keepers in the world, and also a dark black man.
Two minutes after halftime the seemingly inevitable happened. Brazil scored and led 1-0. Bands played, flairs shot, and the 200,000 in the stadium erupted and enveloped the 280 Uruguayan supporters in what was for them a cacophony of jubilant screams. The countdown to a Brazilian victory had begun. Obdulio Varela slowly walked into his goal and grabbed the ball. He then proceeded to argue with the referee about an obviously non-existent offside just to let the crowd cool-off before the restart. He next slowly walked the ball back to midfield, put it down, and according to legend screamed to his teammates “Now it’s time to win.”
In the 66th minute Uruguayan winger Alcides Ghiggia undressed Brazilian defender Bigode and offered a perfect cross that was drilled home by Juan Schiaffino. Barbosa could only watch as he was hung out to dry by his defense. No matter, a draw was still good enough for Brazil to win the title so if the supporters had been slightly discouraged – it certainly didn’t sound like it.
Thirteen minutes later silence reigned. Again Ghiggia undressed Bigode up the flank and again an attacker broke for the post on the opposite side. Barbosa had seen this 13 minutes before, and wasn’t about to be fooled again. He inched away from the post, cheating so as to be able to jump out and grab the cross this time. But Ghiggia had an ace up his sleeve an uncorked a hard shot, low to the near-side post – a spot no keeper should be beat – but with Barbosa cheating far-side because of his porous defense he had to alter his momentum to leap for the ball. He got a piece of the it, but not enough. 2-1 Uruguay. Ghiggia would later famously say “Only three people have silenced the Maracanã: Sinatra, the Pope, and me.”
A little over 10 minutes later and the upset was complete. The seemingly invincible Seleção had been beaten. An entire nation – one that had begun celebrating the victory hours before the match had started – was left stupefied. This was supposed to be their moment. The culmination of more than a half-century of obsessing over a sport brought to them by the Brits. This was to be the day they reached the pinnacle of soccer while showing the world the skill and flair they had for the game. Instead they lost to (arguably) the fourth-best team from South America. Denied, they felt, by a bad mistake from the keeper – the black keeper.
Between the 16th and 19th centuries approximately 4.9 million slaves were sent from Africa to Brazil, by contrast over the same period about 400,000 were sent to the USA. Brazil was the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, doing so in 1888. In 1950 racial tensions in Brazil remained high. Blacks were still denied entry to certain restaurants, bars, and other businesses. To this day they are still not given equal status in the workplace, despite large parts of the country being built upon their slave labor. A recent study found Black Brazilians make only half of the salary that their white counterparts make. In an article on racism in Brazil a man says “In Brazil, calling somebody ‘nigga’ isn’t offensive…if you call somebody ‘black,’ that’s offensive.”** In 1995 a study showed that 89% of Brazilians felt racism played a large role in their lives.***
The litany of offensive language and deeds that Barbosa would endure for the rest of his life is matched only by the class in which he dealt with them. An endless parade of articles, documentaries, and other media to this day beg the question “What if Barbosa stopped Ghiggia?” People who at the time felt like they had the right to treat blacks like second-class citizens treated him like a third. He would be lucky to go a day without a stranger prying Maracanazo back into the forefront if his mind – if it ever left at all. He was spat upon in public. Like most blacks he was denied entry into all kinds of establishments, not waited on in restaurants, not served in stores. He was given dirty looks as a customary greeting. He was a pariah. He was denied jobs and he died in poverty. In 1994 Barbosa wanted to speak to the national team before their trip to the USA for the World Cup – but coach Mario Zagallo refused. 44 years later the coach claimed Barbosa was still “bad luck” and didn’t want him anywhere near the team.
Fast-forward to this past Tuesday and it was another humiliation for Brazil. A 7-1 loss to the Germans in the semifinal meant that despite their record five championships, the two worst losses in the history of the Brazilian National Team have come the only two times they have ever hosted the world’s largest sporting event. Most likely the members of the 2014 team will not be vilified in the same way as Barbosa, but when a Brazilian team losses in such a fashion Maracanazo is always brought up. As a matter of fact, any time a club team from Rio losses in upset fashion it is now referred to as a Maracanazo. And when you think of Maracanazo, you think of Barbosa.
When the woman told her son “This man disgraced Brazil” Barbosa said to her “Look ma’am, you were not even born. This child has no idea what (you are talking about.) How come you humiliate me here in public like that?”
It is possible that the younger generation – one that lived through the 7-1 debacle against Germany but have only heard of Maracanazo through stories and media – will mainly forget the events of 1950 as the newer, more recent tragedy of a soccer-obsessed nation remains embedded in their minds. It is possible that because of this new stunning failure, Barbosa might one day be forgotten. But just as we should never forget that there were 10 other players on the field that day in 1950, we should never forget Barbosa, and Brazilians should never forget the way he was treated. Hopefully the 7-1 drubbing finally allows the ghost of Barbosa to rest in peace, and have only fond memories of him spoken hereafter. It would do a great disservice to the man and his life to forget Maracanazo, but it would be a great service to him if we remember the event for what it truly was – a team losing as a team in a team game, just like the match against Germany.
In one of his last public appearances before his death in 2000 at the age of 79 Barbosa said “Even a criminal when he has paid his debt is forgiven, but I have never been forgiven.” Time heals, but some are forever broken.
* This quote, as well as partial descriptions of the match were taken from:
Joshua Robinson, “The Defeat That Brazil Can’t Forget,” The Wall Street Journal, November 4, 2013.
**Dion Rabouin, “In Brazil Racism Against Afro-Brazilians Persists,” Newsone, June 24, 2014.
***Michel Agier, “Racism, Culture and Black Identity in Brazil,” Bulletin of Latin American Research 14:3, (1995): 245-264.
Article By: Anthony Schiano
