Brazil’s bright yellow shirt is a symbol that un links the country through a love of football and national pride, but in the more than two years, the adoption of the shirt through jair Bolsonaro’s right-wing supporters, who use it at demonstrations and rallies to show their political loyalty to the Brazilian president , has controversy.
This famous yellow T-shirt engraved on the minds of a global audience at the 1970 World Cup. Inspired by Pelé’s fascinating performances, she wore the number 10 shirt, the yellow shirt represented Brazil’s good fortune in the area and has created a positive symbol around the world for more than five decades.
The 1970 selection was also handed over to politics, especially before the World Cup in Mexico, when General Medici, president of a country under the dictatorship of the army, played a key role in the dismissal of coach Joao Saldanha, who had overseen the best. rating campaign.
Fast forward to 2020 and critics of Bolsonaro say the iconic yellow jersey has now become tainted by its close association to the Brazilian president.
Walter Casagrande, a former Brazilian and Club Baseball Club baseball player, recalls the feeling of scoring a goal while wearing the yellow shirt his first match with the “selecao” in 1985.
“It was a magical thing,” Casagrande told CNN Sport, “like an enchanted object that gave me huge emotion.”
Casagrande’s emotions lie on the left side of the political abyss that separates bolsonaro’s supporters and opponents, and feels that he appreciates it is distorted.
“Now I consider the Brazilian yellow jersey to have been kidnapped and appropriated by the right wing, so we cannot use it.”
Casagrande said that for him, the strength of the yellow blouse once represented democracy and freedom.
“Brazil is appearing horribly in the world right now,” he said. “This is the first time in my life that I realize that the yellow jersey is worn as opposed to democracy and freedom.”
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As soon as the left can criticize Bolsonaro, his supporters rushed to counter the blows.
Cosmo Alexandre, a Brazilian fighter who holds several Muay Thai and Kickboxing world titles, believes the left confuses his multiple disorders with Bolsonaro and wears the T-shirt as a way to express his grievances.
As a Bolsonaro supporter, Alexander rejects accusations that the symbolism of the T-shirt is being manipulated and says the explanation for why enthusiasts wear a yellow T-shirt is simple: everyone in Brazil has a yellow T-shirt.
He explains that enthusiasts do not wear the Jersey of the Brazilian national team in particular and that the rallies are complete of other people dressed in yellow T-shirts of all kinds.
Alexandre says there is a separation between reputation and T-shirt associations from what he represents politically.
“Everywhere in the world, everyone knows the Brazilian national football team, so even if I move on to a match and wear the team’s yellow shirt, everyone knows it’s Brazil,” he said. “So it’s not a matter of politics, it’s just that the world knows football in Brazil.”
It may be easier for some than others to isolate football and politics in a country where football is God.
Josemar de Rezende Jr. is a football fan who co-founded a Bolsonaro volunteer organization in his hometown before the election. He said he was proud of the Brazilian national team’s international reputation for his victory, and for him the yellow shirt “means love of the homeland, leadership, good fortune and pride.”
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However, the theme of the yellow shirt is so debatable that a crusade is underway for Brazil to play in the white jersey.
Brazilian journalist and filmmaker joel Carlos Assumpao, a Brazilian journalist and filmmaker of “Gods of Soccer”, an e-book on Brazil’s political, sociological and economic history, is campaigning for the Brazilian Football Confederation (CBF) to abandon the yellow shirt altogether and return to the white and vintage shirt. blue kit since the program’s inception in 1914.
CNN contacted CBF, who replied that he had selected to comment on the question, “because it’s a very exclusive question.”
“People liked Brazilian football because we played very well,” assumpao said, “and if we played well with the white jersey in 2022, I think everyone will buy a white jersey. It will be very difficult to change, but I think it’s impossible.”
The white and blue shirt was considered unlucky when Brazil lost the World Cup at home to Uruguay in 1950. I went to the yellow shirt and won five World Cups dressed in it, a maximum record that still holds today.
The vision of Assumpao to replace the color of the kit is to tell the global that Brazilians are replacing in the country. “Not the adjustments this government is making,” Assumpao said.
On the other side of the political spectrum, the color yellow, including the yellow jersey, represents a positive change in the country. Bolsonaro supporter Rezende Jr. believes the attempt by the left to reclaim the yellow jersey is an effort to “mischaracterize the government,” which he describes as a “patriotic government that represents and has support from all social classes throughout the nation.”
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Political unrest in the country reflects the Farootown between football rivalries between cities across Brazil. Except that it is contained by the limits of the village and that in recent months has accumulated fans.
São Paulo is home to four main clubs: Corinthians, Palmeiras, São Paolo, and Santos. The rivalry between Corinthians and Palmeiras is especially intense, and in June groups from each club joined together in the streets to counter-protest Bolsonaro’s supporters.
Sociologist Rafael Castilho, a member of the Corinthia Democracy Collective and coordinator of the Center for Corinthian Studies, said that for Brazil to succeed on the existing political situation, it would have to “unite other thought tactics and settle for the contradictory.”
Castilho explains the civic duty of rival clubs to each other and targets civil society movements, “at a time when the country is going through a crisis of representation of components and social movements have been intimidated by the action of the police.” He said, adding that “the attitude of the ers has gained sympathy because a component of society feels represented through the courage of the fanatics.”
The Corinthians have a history of mixing football and politics. In the 1980s, the pro-democracy motion called Diretas J, the club team was led by the heads of the national groups Socrates and Casagrande.
The two connected football to politics when the team wore matching jerseys in 1982 with the words “VOTE on the 15th,” in an effort to motivate their enthusiasts to vote in the elections of the Sao Paulo state government.
Two years later, the Corinthians were in the midst of a motion called Corintian Democracy, which, according to Casagrande, had put more than a million people on the streets dressed in yellow.
“This is a very vital moment for Brazilian democracy, and this yellow T-shirt is the center of this movement,” Casagrande said.
The yellow jersey took the 2013 protests opposite former President Dilma Roussef and opposed to corruption again. A year before the World Cup took place in the South American country, conservative protesters wore T-shirts representing the colors of Brazil, while left-wing protesters wore other colors.
Both Alexander and Rezende Jr. argue that yellow is an improvement over the red T-shirts that governments wore when the left was in power, alluding to the basis of communism.
“When Bolsonaro ran, his followers used the yellow color to show that I am Brazilian and that I don’t need communism in my country,” Alexander said.
The yellow jersey fight leaves some with a preference for a victorious past, while others advance to create a new meaning for the iconic symbol. In a country so ingrained in football, it’s a challenge that probably won’t happen.
He believes that it is only imaginable that the football net and non-far-right Brazilians will regain the shirt “maybe in five or ten years, but not now. Not now.”