Everywhere has its irremediable national catastrophe, something like a Hiroshima. Our catastrophe, our Hiroshima, was the defeat by Uruguay in 1950. Nelson Rodrigues.In 1950 there was no World Cup Final.
The championship was decided on a round robin basis, so the winners could have been crowned before the hosts Brazil met Uruguay at Estádio do Maracanã on 16 July. As it was Brazil needed just one point to secure the Jules Rimet Trophy as it was now known.
Their defeat at the hands of neighbours Uruguay in what became known as the Final Fatídica left a scar on the national psyche, and ironically in a country with a rich football heritage and an unparalleled 5 World Cup successes, it is this defeat which is remembered as their most significant game, even giving a new word to the vocabulary, Maracanazo.
The newspapers proclaiming a Brazil victory had been printed, songs had been written and medals had been struck. Brazil were 1/10 on favourites to win and stood to collect mammoth bonuses of around £10,000 if they lifted the trophy. Jules Rimet had prepared a speech in Portuguese for when he inevitably presented the trophy to Augusto da Costa.
Having had to seek him out unaided by his stunned hosts, M. Rimet presents Varela with the trophy in the midst of 200,000 silent Brazilians.
England came out of World Cup isolation and were promptly humiliated by the USA .Ill prepared probably in the belief that English football was football, and that a combination of muscular , direct football and dribbling and crossing to a big centre forward would be enough to affirm their primacy in the game they invented- but this was a world of which they knew nothing, and the fifties were to be a succession of wake up calls which they were very slow to heed.
India missed out on all this- refusing to go because FIFA would not allow the team to play barefoot.
