Reader remembers the popcorn his grandfather made to watch games; see stories about the World Cup

The World Cup is an event that divides opinions. Many people are engaged and follow the entire championship, the less knowledgeable watch one or another game, especially those of the Brazilian team, and others prefer to ignore the existence of the World Cup.

For some readers of Sheet, the championship is insignificant. Small business owner Fernando Teixeira Soares Filho, 63, from Salvador (BA), says that the World Cup means nothing to him and the only change in his routine is that, on Brazil match days, he will close his shop earlier.

Lawyer Luiz Fernando Cachoeira, 65, from Curitiba (PR), says he doesn’t even support the national team, just Flamengo.

However, there is also an atmosphere of nostalgia that surrounds the tournament. Frederico Guerra Ribeiro, 33, from Fernandópolis (SP), fondly remembers the times when he watched games with his family and still smells the popcorn his grandfather prepared before a match in Brazil.

“It has memories of those who have passed away, people with whom I shared joys with Brazilian titles and sadness in eliminations.”

The same longing is shared by reader Márcia Regina Bemerguy Queiroz, 55, from Santarém (PA), who learned from her father that “the World Cup brings much-needed poetry in difficult times”.

“My father was looking forward to this event and said that the world exchanged its stupid choices, like wars, for the hope of a smile coming from the joy of a goal”, he recalls.

Readers remember the Cups they followed in childhood and the types of decorations they were excited to make. Journalist Denise Santana, 51, from Brasília (DF), got together with other children to distribute little flags on windows and poles, paint the street green and yellow and cheer. “It was too good,” she says wistfully.

And Claudia Darakjian Tavares Prado, 58, who is a physical education teacher in São Paulo (SP), remembers the 1970 World Cup, when she was six years old, in which Brazil won its third title.

“My mother sewed two flags and attached them to broomsticks. With each victory we drove with my father and mother through the streets of the neighborhood holding the flags. The final was unforgettable, a Sunday of joy, cheering and two flags fluttering through the windows. of a red steed. Long live the tri of Pelé, Rivelino, Zagallo.”

In the case of journalist André Cintra, 42, from Betim (MG), the story with the World Cup began when he was ten years old. Now he has the company of his children.

“As Chico Buarque would say, the World Cup is a ‘fleeting joy’, an interval of escapism in the middle of four years of life. Even though FIFA and the Brazilian National Team haven’t been helping much, supporting Brazil in the World Cup is that priesthood irresistible.”

But, for the most critical, the Cup lost much of its meaning of uniting nations to serve the interests of the market. “It’s been a long time since football ceased to be art and became just another commercial event”, says Marconiedes Araujo da Silva, 51, from Tobias Barreto (SE).

“It came to be monetized, negotiated, that is, a sport that was fully embraced by capitalism, with its constant eagerness for profits. For me, football dies with every dispute and its executioners applaud, increasingly blinded by limitless ambition” , writes Marcia Pereira da Silva, 65, from Rio de Janeiro (RJ).

Some also say that they no longer identify with the composition of the selection or even with the uniform. “In this World Cup I’m sad, desolate”, says Claudia Immezi Alvarenga, 53, from São Paulo (SP).

In the reader’s view, the event was a moment of harmony for the nation that has now been impacted by political events. “I don’t see myself with the yellow shirt, at the risk of being mistaken for a bunch of insane fanatics. And the players show themselves as isolated stars and not as a real team.”