Não mais vira-latas... um homem genial! O Brasil como o país do futebol

Abstract

Soccer is an activity and a discourse that has for years individualized, identified and brought pride to Brazilians, giving them an identity and marking their place in the world. In the epistemological search for the representation of Brazil as the land of soccer, the chronicles written by three of the greatest Brazilian columnists of all times, Nelson Rodrigues, João Saldanha and Armando Nogueira, were analyzed. They helped characterize Brazilian football having as an essential quality the practice of the art-football. From the shy, inhibited and humble man - Nelson Rodrigues' mongrel -, the Brazilian man becomes the brilliant man, full of virtues and qualities as from the triumphant campaign in the 1958 World Cup. Those discourses are not limited by the sportive space, they enter other discursive spaces and become polyphonic, dialoguing and forming images about what it is to be Brazilian.
Keywords: History; Soccer; Identity; Representation and Chronicles