When the 2022 World Cup began, supporting Brazil was not easy for some of those who had voted for Lula in the elections.
The corruption of the Brazilian Football Confederation had already sullied the national team's jersey enough, but nothing compared to its usurpation, along with other symbols of the country, by the extreme right embodied by Jair Bolsonaro.
The World Cup began and the Bolsonaristas, dressed in the yellow shirt, continued to call for a military coup in front of the Army headquarters.
One of Bolsonaro's most enthusiastic public figures is Neymar, the leading Brazilian player.
How to sit in front of the television with a bag of popcorn to support Neymar and a selection of billionaire children?
And how not to do it, in a country whose identity has been largely defined by soccer?
That the World Cup is played in the dictatorship of Qatar, oppressor of women, homophobic, corrupt and with a past and present of violations of human rights and nature, reveals a lot about the football business and would already be reason enough to boycott it. .
But then Richarlison arrived, a player who manifests politically for social causes.
To make it better, he has adopted a jaguar.
Not an adoption of putting a collar on the animal, but of monitoring it in its natural environment.
To complete it, he made a work of art in the form of a goal in the match against Serbia.
It was enough for the left to grab onto Richarlison for redemption.
Seeing the Bolsonaro player Neymar on the bench due to an ankle injury and the progressive Richarlison triumphing on the field was interpreted as a synopsis of the moment Brazil is experiencing,
For a part of the broad front that supported Lula, Brazil must be “pacified”.
The World Cup would be an opportunity to show that the yellow shirt belongs to all Brazilians.
The problem is that there has never been a pacified Brazil, except as mystification.
The impossibility of there being this pacification was made explicit at the feast that Ronaldo, the ex-Fenómeno, sponsored at the Nusr-Et restaurant, accompanied by two national team players: they ordered and ate the Golden steak, a 24-cookie gold-plated ribeye. carats.
For players who represent a country with 33 million hungry people to eat and, hopefully, shit gold is painful.
Just as bad is that gold, wherever it comes from, is associated with the destruction of nature and the violation of human rights.
In Brazil, meat and gold are driving the Amazon jungle to the point of no return.
Under the command of Ronaldo, the players achieved the feat of uniting the two villains in a single tacky.
Soccer has always told a lot about Brazil.
In 2023, the country will continue between the jaguar that survives Richarlison's extermination and Ronaldo's gold-plated T-bone steak.
This is the dispute.
That has translated perfectly into this World Cup sponsored by a dictatorship.
Translation by
Meritxell Almarza
.
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