Galvão Bueno narrates his 50th game for Brazil in Cups with an eye on ‘é hexa’

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Five days before Galvão Bueno was born, on July 21, 1950, Brazil was already experiencing a drama, in the same Rio de Janeiro.

The 16th marked the first final of the selection in a World Cup, in the historic —and dramatic— Maracanazo, when the selection lost to Uruguay by 2-1, in the comeback.

Many dramas, conquests, goals and misses later, the most famous voice of football narration in the country will complete 50 games of Brazil in World Cups this Monday (28), all by Globo, when the selection takes the field in the containers stadium, the 974, to face Switzerland in the second round of Group G at the Qatar World Cup.

“The Cup is the pinnacle of our career. Each one is the renewal of that achievement. Do you have any idea how many millions of people I speak to at the Cup? It’s enough to throw the adrenaline up there”, said Galvão to Sheetin 2018, shortly before the World Cup played in the same year.

In Qatar, the narrator takes action in his 13th World Cup (he has already joked with Zagallo on social networks, remembering the number), but it is the tenth in which he narrates Brazil games on open TV.

In their 49 previous games, the retrospect is positive, with 34 wins, seven draws and eight defeats; 88 goals scored and 42 conceded.

His debut was in 1986, in the thin victory of the selection against Algeria still in the first phase, a goal by Careca.

It was after 21 of the second half when, in a tangled game, he finally shouted “goooooollllll from Brazil, it’s from Careca, number 9”, with a cleaner voice, at the age of 36, long before the recent “look at the goal, look at the goal , look at the goal…”

The main narrator in that Cup was Osmar Santos, who was only absent from the match against the Algerians because he had a hemorrhoid crisis.

In 1990, she was already the voice of the station, always remembering that “winning is good, but winning against Argentina is much better”. But it was Argentina that eliminated the selection in that Cup.

His “it’s a tetra, it’s a tetra, it’s a tetra”, with a squeaky voice, as he himself remembers, became a trademark, as well as the “get out of it, Taffarel”, who shouted at the national team’s goalkeeper. At first, in a critical tone, but later it turned into a compliment, even used in penalty shootouts, and which every four years is adapted to the guy at the time — we’ve been under the sign “get out of your way, Alisson” since 2018.

In 2002, the tetra became a penta, and the letter erre was never so stretched in Rrrrronaldo, Rrrrrronaldinho Gaúcho, Rrrrrrivaldo and Rrrrrrroberto Carlos —in 2022, we have Rrrrrricharlison, keeping the tradition.

The more technical narration gained a more critical tone over the years.

Galvão continues following the action, hardly ever misses the names of players, but takes the time to add his pinpricks or increase the dramatic load, “haaaaaja, Coração”, “live a drama…”.

Luiz Felipe Scolari has not spoken to the narrator since the 2014 comments in Jornal Nacional; Neymar and friends always complain about criticism received time or time, or another, or another.

“There is pressure on everything you say on television. I have nothing to do with anyone’s personal life. I criticize, I comment on what is in the field,” he said in another interview with Sheetin August 2022.

When memes were still a child’s thing, there was already a “shut up, Galvão” taking over the internet during the 2010 World Cup and leading the world’s trending topics, sharing the attention with Larissa Riquelme and Paul the octopus.

And if Galvão wasn’t born in time for the Maracanazo, he fully lived the Mineiraço. In the 7-1 against Germany, the worst defeat of the selection in World Cups, and Galvão, his phrases in a tone of disappointment for each goal of the rival are repeated until today in different contexts: “It became a walk”, “here they come again” .

Galvão has been saying that he is about to end his cycle on open television and that his career should move to other platforms. But he also said in 2010 that he would no longer hold the World Cup outside of Brazil and that, therefore, 2014 would be his last.

Perhaps the narrator is waiting for the “yeah, hex, hex” to come out at the top. As Zagallo, commentator in that game against Algeria in 1986, would say, there are only six to go.

And even if this is his last World Cup, viewers won’t have time to get so nostalgic for his voice, increasingly frequent in commercial breaks, social networks, podcasts…

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