Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Country of football is becoming the country of wax

It happens in 99% of the games here. It’s not exclusive to any team. There are Libertadores champions who do it, as well as a Serie D team doing it. And of course that happens anywhere in the world, even with Pep Guardiola’s team. But around here, it’s been a while since they’ve been exaggerating the dose.

Brazil has always been recognized for being the “country of football”, the place where talent with the ball at its feet springs from the ground. But I imagine that nowadays, for those who don’t know and start following the Brazilian Championship without warning, Brazil has become the country of wax. Not the one that the bees produce, but the one that the players insist on starring on the field every holy round.

You don’t always have a set time to start. Sometimes it’s five minutes to the end of the game – and then it’s even more understandable. Sometimes, the trigger is the goal of the team with the least financial power, which from then on starts to want the game to end to achieve the result – and does absolutely everything to make it happen, stopping the match with simulations, requests for assistance and using the countless strategies that only Brazilian malandragem was able to devise.

And just to be clear: I think it would be hypocritical to say here that wax is not part of the game. It is important, yes, to realize that there are moments in the game where a short break can help. The problem is not stopping the game, the problem is forcing so many stops to the point of not letting the game roll.

It’s like the saying goes: “everything in excess is bad”. And Brazilian football has been exaggerating simulations and waxing during games for a long time. Some scenes are even marked, either for better or for worse. It happened in the last two Libertadores finals – coincidence or not, two 100% Brazilian finals.

In the 2020 edition, in the stoppage time of the match between Palmeiras and Santos, the then coach of the alvinegro team, Cuca, tried to delay Marcos Rocha’s throw-in by holding the ball and preventing the quick replacement – he ended up being sent off, including, and was watch the game from the stands. Minutes later, he saw his opponent score the title goal with Breno Lopes.

In 2021, Palmeiras was already beating Flamengo 2-1 in overtime when Deyverson pretended to have received a blow on the back from the referee of the match and fell simulating pain. “It was to buy time,” he explained later, saying he thought he had received a touch from a Flamengo player, not the referee.

If they were exclusive situations in the finals or in the last minutes of a knockout game, I could even try to understand. But this is constant. In the game between Goiás and Palmeiras last Saturday (16), the team from Goiás opened the scoring at 13 of the second half and, from then on, players began to fall frequently. One of them stayed on the ground for a while asking for medical attention, the stretcher came and, the second the stretcher left the field, he jumped off it to get back into the game and disrupt a throw-in from the opponent. In Santos x Coritiba, the penalty given to Coxa came from a bizarre simulation.

I could cite here dozens of examples from all teams in all rounds of the Brazilian Championship. There are games that spend more time with the ball at rest than with it rolling, in the face of so many simulations, wax, complaints with the referee and delay in charging a simple foul.

To increase the time of the ball rolling around here, a movement of mutual collaboration is necessary. Athletes reduce the simulations, referees punish these attitudes as soon as they start, technical commissions not to encourage this type of behavior, the press also not to naturalize excess wax as “part of the game”.

For the end of the Wolf Maya School of Brazilian players.