99% Invisible - 260- New Jersey

Episode Date: May 24, 2017

The Brazilian soccer shirt is iconic. Its bright canary yellow with green trim, worn with blue shorts, is known worldwide. The uniform is joyful and bold and seems to capture something essential about Brazil. But it was not always this … Continue reading →

This is 99% invisible. I'm Roman Mars. When a Brazilian soccer player scores a goal, the announcer starts slow. And it builds. Until it reaches a glorious crescendo. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaa That's because soccer means so much to Brazil. How can I explain what soccer means to Brazilians without sounding corny, but I think I'm going to have to sound corny, okay? That's Fernando Duarte, a BBC journalist who wrote a book about Brazilian soccer. Soccer, or football as I call it being British, arrived in Brazil in the late 19th century. At first it was a game played in elite circles and in cities, but poor and working glass Brazilians struggled to make the game their own.

The only time the elites were robbed or deprived of something by the poor people or by the common folk is when football seized to be a game for the elites and it became a mass sport. Soccer eventually became so popular and beloved in Brazil that their national team soccer jersey has become as much a national symbol as the country's flag. We're gonna see many more people in Brazil wearing the shirt than waving the flag as a sense of belonging. No matter if you earn, you know, peanuts picking up old Sothecans on the street or if you're a millionaire, when you wear that shirt you're just like one of us, those shirts are extraordinary. They are scintillating. In fact, I think the word is co-rascating.

That's the Socorita and historian, David Goldblatt. There are flashes of diamond light coming off of those shirts. to end historian David Goblah. The Brazilian soccer shirts are so iconic that non-soccer fans all over the world can often picture them, but for those of you who can't, the shirt is a bright canary yellow with green trim around the collar and sleeves. They're worn with blue shorts, a pure primary blue. Compared with other soccer jerseys, the uniform is joyful and bold. It seems to capture something essential about Brazil. But it wasn't always this way. In fact, Brazil used to play in plain, unremarkable white shirts.

The story of how the uniform changed goes back 70 years to an epic soccer game that Brazilians will never forget. After years of lobbying, the World Cup arrived in Brazil in 1950. At the time, the country was culturally and internationally kind of unknown. This was Brazil's big moment to show the world what it was made of. The 1950 World Cup was understood

by the Brazilian population as an opportunity to say to the world, Brazil has arrived. They knew this World Cup was their chance to tell everyone. We have modernised, we have been transformed, we've moved from being an agricultural plantation economy to a new urban industrialised economy, and this is our way of showing it. The main symbol of that coming out, apart from what was happening on the soccer field, was the stadium named the Maricanar in Rio de Janeiro.

It looks like the stadium from outer space. I mean, it is this fabulous flat white concrete oval with amazing flying buttresses. Just like this huge flying saucer that had dropped down in the center of the city. But done with this sort of incredible sort of modernist elegance, I mean it was the greatest stadium built since the Colosseum. So they had the stadium, the people were behind them, the government was pushing the tournament whenever possible. Now all they needed was a successful team. The expectations were high because of this whole climate, this atmosphere of optimism. In one of their earlier games, Brazil strobe confidently onto the field in their white uniforms

and proceeded to demolish Sweden 7-1. Brazil were absolutely fantastic in the opening rounds. They were slaughtering everybody, the scoring goals or over the place. They beat Spain 6-1. They also beat Mexico and Yugoslavia. The tournament was going exactly to plan. It was this whole atmosphere of like sporting bliss. exactly to plan. Because of a quirk in the tournament structure, all Brazil had to do to win the World Cup was

tie against Uruguay in their final game. Uruguay historically had been a really strong team, even though they're a tiny country almost 50 times smaller than Brazil. But by the time this 1950 World Cup came along, Uruguay was a waning power in soccer, so beating them or at least tying them seemed totally doable, not a problem. Still, Uruguay was no pushover, especially when they were playing against Brazil. Uruguay actually used to be a Brazilian province, so they had this chip on their shoulder about their older,

bigger, next-door neighbour. The whole thing of being Uruguay and going against the odds, fighting against an old colonial power, it spurred them on. Meanwhile, the whole of Rio is now thinking about just one thing, the World Cup Final. There really is mass hysteria about it. Everybody knows about it. Everyone's engaged with it. Everyone wants to go. No one can talk or think about anything else. In Brazil, people like to say that if everybody who claimed to have been in the stadium that afternoon was actually there, the stadium would have needed to be the size of the moon. And it was a big crowd. Some estimate that there were 250,000 screaming fans packed into this flying saucer stadium, which is something like 80,000 people

over a capacity. And the players, when they walked out, would just hit with this wall of noise. The place is noisy, it is raucous. But in the first half, neither team scores. So the crowd was getting nervous, everybody was getting tense. Then finally, Brazil scores a goal. Just after half time, a low shot across the goalkeeper into the bottom corner of the net. And there's just this relief that surges all around the crowd, even the journalist run on and embrace the players. Because basically everyone there thinks the game is all over, that Brazil has won the World Cup. But then... you're a wise scores. About halfway through the second half. The description by whoever was there is that the stadium fell very, very nervous and this nervousness

went to the players, almost like they were losing the game. And then comes the moment that everybody will always know right. Our seedest Gigi, one of the Uruguayan wingers, gets the bull and dribbles down the right side toward the goal. And just as he's looking up to pass the bull, he notices that the goalkeeper Barbosa was actually walking to try to anticipate across, which meant Barbosa was out of position. So instead of passing the ball, Gigi shakes and scores. All of the reports talk about the most extraordinary silence in the stadium. I'll see the Gigi once said in his book, only three people in the history of the Maddaka now, silence that crowd.

Frank Sinatra, Pope John Paul II, and me is almost like a graveyard. Some of the players don't even remember what happened. It was a state of catatonio, something like that. As you have probably guessed by now, Brazil does not manage to get another goal to tie the game. And Uruguay wins. As the game ends, the fans stream out of the stadium and back onto the streets of Rio.

He's almost like some kind of apocalypse happening people just when somewhere else. There was this feeling of solitude, this feeling of numbness. And Rio de Janeiro wasn't a party city on the night, on the night of July 16th, 1950. There was a lot of public crying, there's a lot of hyperbole. One Brazilian playwright caused the defeat Brazil's Hiroshima.

All right, well that's just ridiculous. Which I think is both in bad taste and in exaggeration, but people were really blind away. The recriminations came thick and fast, and soon racist accusations started to fly. Barbosa, the guy who played goalkeeper for the Brazilians, was Black. He and two other Black players on the team were scapegoated in the popular press, and Barbosa was even hassled on the street. His life was my difficult, there's a tragic story he tells later in life of hearing a woman whispering to a child, this is the man who made all of Brazil cry.

After that, the Brazilian team didn't pick another Black goalkeeper to start in the world cup for over 50 years. And this wasn't a coincidence. After that game, Black Goalkeepers were regarded as less reliable than white ones in Brazil. Which is disgusting. But Barboso wasn't the only focus of Brazilian blame. In fact, everything about Brazilian soccer was scrutinized down to the uniforms the players were wearing. The authorities father the white shirt was cursed, and I think everybody else in Brazil did.

And above all, there was a determination never to play in white shirts again. It was pretty unusual for a team to completely transform their uniform. Most countries have played in the same colors since the first world cup back in the early 20th century, but the Brazilians decided their uniform was a problem. So in 1953, the Brazilians soccer their uniform was a problem. So in 1953, the Brazilians

soccer authorities set up a competition and advertised it in a national newspaper that's distributed all over Brazil. They wanted people to write in with their designs for a new uniform. The contest had only one stipulation. The color of the uniform had to include all the colors of the Brazilian flag. Green, blue, white, and yellow, a design that would truly represent Brazil. Hundreds of people entered the contest, including this guy. My name is Ojígras C. And I'm from Jaguaron, on the board with Uruguay. Audea Garcia Schlei.

Ele era apenas 19 quando ele entrou a competição. Um homem que foi feito em um pouco de cidade na borda de Brasil e Uruguai. Schlei não era um designer. Ele estava fazendo um novo pape de pape de uma ilestrada. Ele disse que quando ele foi firsto sobre a competição ele pensou que isso seria tão difícil. Primeiro impressiono que eu tive que estar estava de uma bobagem. He says when he first heard about the competition, he thought it'd be too difficult. The first impression I had was that Jesus was foolish, that was ridiculous, because it's rare to have a team with four colors.

Working four colors into just the shirt would have been hard, but eventually, Schley realized he could use the whole uniform to spread out the colors. He tried blue shorts with a green shirt, a yellow and green stripe shirt with white shorts, a green and yellow stripe shirt with blue shorts. He came up with over 200 different designs. Until eventually, he had it. A gente tinha isso. Blue shorts, white socks, e um chão de chão com o treino de grão sobre o seu corpo e os leves. Ele sentiu a design de um pouco mais tarde. Ele se olhou na péssia e se olhou e se olhou na péssia de seu design,

estarei na péssia. Ele era uma. As iniciativas do meu nome e ele era indio antes foi soferst. Depois da época, ele era só um pate. O meu pate não era de agrução e eu sempre acabei de liberar o seu novo ronho que eu funcionava. After that was just a party. My feet didn't touch the ground and I was celebrating the new room where I worked. It was like something impossible had just happened. After he won, Schlagotte Bask in the glory of it all for a while.

He went to Rio, did an internship with the newspaper that had sponsored the contest. He even lived with the Brazilian players for a few months. But eventually, he returned to his small town, and kind of forgot about the shirt for a while. But pretty soon, the shirt was Brazil. In 1962, the Brazilians won the World Cup in Chile, and they were wearing Shlays uniform. Players like Pele wore the yellow shirt and dazzled the world with their extraordinary

skill and beauty. Then color TV comes along and the whole world can watch Brazil in brand new Technicolor, like in the 1970 World Cup in Mexico. I was, you know, five when the 1970 World Cup was played and I saw Brazil win the 1970 World Cup in shimmering yellow shirts. Here's soccer historian David Goblaggan. For me, there's a memory there that I think lots of people have, even if they didn't see it, of dazzle, of brilliance,

of amazing sort of global South sunshine, of flair. showing of flair. Where Brazil had failed in 1950, the following years saw success after success. They won World Cup after World Cup. Their yellow shirts becoming as much a hallmark as their intricate footwork and dazzling play. Shlays' design became iconic, a symbol of Brazil, full of sun and life. But for Slay, life wasn't quite living up to the image of Brazil he had created. He started working as a writer in academic. In 1964, a brutal US-backed military dictatorship took power in a coup.

The new military government cracked down on the dictatorship took power in a coup. Antigue large demonstrations that greeted the now-deposed Brazilian president at Miami Airport when he- The new military government cracked down on people it considered to be subversive, including academics. Like a lot of other professors and students, Chile was arrested for basically being on the political left. When he got out of jail, he was expelled from his teaching job and was banned from leaving the country. Quando ele foi fora de gel, ele foi expelada de seu trabalho e foi banhado na cidade. Por cima, mas de qualquer maneira ultral, mano.

Sim, eu estava traumatizando minha vida e meus sonhos, nós sofremos muito. E sofremos muito. O dictatório foi mais para 20 anos, mas, despitea as dificuldades de viver contra o But despite the difficulties of living under the watchful eye of the military police, Shlei became a successful writer and he developed an academic specialty. Shlei spent his life writing about the border between Brazil and Uruguay. I am a citizen who has a heart and a body divided between Brazil and Uruguay. Shlei was technically born in Brazil, but less than a mile from the border de Uruguai. Shlay foi ternamente bom em Brasile, mas menos thana mais de um ano da borda com o Uruguai. Em fato, quando ele era um jovem,

o seu pai foi a dar uma brilhada sobre a rava que separou o Uruguai de Brasile. Eu sou fruto. Eu sou de a era quando o brilhado era um jovem. A minha mãe foi a dar uma brilhada. Então eu sempre estava muito conectado com a Rua. Eu sempre estava muito ligado com a Rua. Shlays Experiante, comendo entre dois países,

e seus experiências contra o rei de militares, têm ajudado a dar uma olhada para o Brasil e a nacionalismo. Achei que, até que ele estava com um chute, que poderia ser mais patrioticamente than o Brasil e o flag, ele é realmente muito ag agente de patriotismo. É uma ideia que concorre com aquelas que eu tenho a respeito... É uma ideia de competir com as pessoas que eu tenho para limitar e limitar e limitar os bordes.

A Chile não pode ser um patriotismo brasileiro, mas o socorfan e ele não podem't help but be proud of the Brazilian team. Brazil was 5 years ago. Brazil won the championship 5 times. This is a source of pride. It's an honor for all of us. But Shlay has a secret, or at least something he never used to share with people who knew he was the designer of the famous yellow shirt. Shlei roots for Uruguay. For many in Brazil this is blasphemy, but not for him. We are one people, one border community.

Even if you have two languages, the people have only one culture identity. Shlay feels culturally connected to both Brazil and Uruguay, but he ultimately had to pick one country's team to root for. So these days, when Brazil plays Uruguay, Shlay, like a lot of other soccer fans, suits up in his favourite jersey. But not the yellow shirt he designed, a sky blue one, the colour of Uruguay.

Then he crosses the border from Brazil to Uruguay and finds some quiet bar to watch the game. 99% Invisible Was Produced This Week by Joe Sykes with Delaney Hall and Mitt Fitzgerald, Avery Tuffleman and me Roman Morris. Technical production and mix by Sri Fusef with music by Sean Rial and Melodium. The English voiceover for the story was done by Neh Ara Ujo. Kitty Mingle is our senior editor, Kurt Kohlstedt is the digital director, and Terran Mazza is the office manager.

We'd like to thank Alex Belloes for his help. Alex was the first English journalist to write about this story and helped point us in the right direction. Junior Mazza and Fabio Aranalde also affixed everything up in Brazil and translated our interview with Shlay. We are a project of 91.7KALW in San Francisco and produced on Radio Row in beautiful downtown Oakland, California. You can find the show and join discussions about the show on Facebook.

You can tweet at me at Roman Mars in the show at 99PI org. We're on Instagram, Tumblr, and have a nice subreddit too. But this week we have two articles by Kurt about the naming, numbering, and categorization of colors on our website. It's 99PI dot org. Radio Tumpia. The realization of colors on our website, it's 9ipi.org. Radio tapio. From PRX.