Three weeks to World Cup kick-off and the Brazilians are downbeat, underperforming and generally hangdog — Brazilian fans, that is.
Their team might be hot, steamrolling Latin American rivals in the qualifiers and gunning for a record sixth world title in Russia, but the yellow-shirted fan base is decidedly blue.
Souvenir sellers report slow business. Newspapers obsess over the state of Neymar’s health and the ghosts of the disastrous 2014 World Cup lurk.
According to an opinion poll by the Parana Institute, Brazilians are bullish about the actual soccer, which starts next month.
Two-thirds think the selecao is favorite to lift the trophy and 35 percent see Neymar as likely to be player of the tournament, compared to 30 percent for Portugal’s Cristiano Ronaldo.
The problem is not that many Brazilians care, the poll showed.
Sixty six percent have little or no interest in the upcoming championship, while 14.5 percent do not even know where it is taking place.
“There’s not the same level of enthusiasm as before,” driver Serafim Fernandes said as he shopped in soccer-mad Rio de Janeiro’s teeming Saara market.
Fernandes, 62, blamed the economy for the lack of passion. It is only now edging from a record-deep, two-year recession, made worse by a corruption scandal tearing through the political elite.
“People are really suffering,” he said.
Four years ago, when Brazil hosted the World Cup, wall paintings and streets emblazoned in yellow and green sprouted around the nation well more than a month before anyone touched the ball.
Street painting, flag hanging and murals are an old tradition and the decorations’ absence so far this year is glaring.
In Rio de Janeiro, there is even a threat to the staging of the 40-year-old World Cup street party known as Alzirao.
The biggest fan festival in the city is usually set up far in advance, attracting tens of thousands of people. This year, Alzirao has yet to show any signs of life after losing its sponsor, the drinks giant Ambev.
At one of the many Rio de Janeiro stores selling Brazilian soccer kits, shopkeeper Paulo Santos Silva said he was being “prudent” about buying stock ahead of the tournament.
“Before, you could order 5,000 shirts, knowing they’d sell. Now you risk ending up stuck with them, so you buy 100, sell them, buy 100 and if we win a game buy 200,” he said.
Silva said the economic slowdown is not all that is spooking him. There is also the “shameful” exit from the 2014 event, that 7-1 semi-final apocalypse against Germany.
“It’s engraved on Brazilians’ memory,” he said.
For some, the lukewarm atmosphere has even deeper meaning.
The adoption of the yellow team shirt by huge crowds demonstrating in 2015 and 2016 to bring down then-Brazilian president Dilma Rousseff tarnished the national colors, politician Paulo Pimenta said.
“The coup plotters even took away Brazilians’ happiness from football,” he said on Twitter. “The [team] shirt became a symbol of shame.”
However, SporTV commentator Ledio Carmona said that the gloom and doom is over the top.
The idea that Rio should be swathed in bunting and paint is rooted in nostalgia for the joyful unity of 1982, when Brazil sent one of their greatest-ever teams to the World Cup in Spain — even if they lost to Italy in the quarter-finals.
“People in Brazil have a fantasy related to the 1982 Cup,” he said. “It’s almost a legend, but those who were young at that time are working now and those who are young today don’t have the money to paint streets.”
Once the action starts, Brazilians will be cheering as loudly as ever, Carmona said.
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