Maracana: Brazil-England Is Back on at a Ground of Immense National Importance

Frank Sinatra performed there; Pope John Paul II used it to celebrate mass with the largest congregation of the faithful ever assembled in Latin America.

But it is neither a concert hall nor a cathedral, and much of the spectacle it offers involves merely 22 people and a ball.

And yet it is both theatre and house of worship—a spiritual place that provides its guests with equal parts entertainment, inspiration and existential confirmation.

Brazil’s Maracana stadium was built in advance of the 1950 World Cup, and ever since, it has captured the national psyche unlike any other institution. It has thrown parties; it has been heavy with sadness; it has threatened to crumble; it has received the Eucharist.

In 1957, a teenage Pele had his first chance to play there.

“When I saw it, it really felt like a dream,” he writes in his self-titled autobiography. “I was completely taken aback with it. When we were training sometimes I just stared and stared at the stands.”

He added: “I know that it was the scene of the tragic defeat in 1950, but for me I played many of my most important games there.”

In 1950, Pele was nine years old and his family home was packed with people listening to the final match of the World Cup on an old, square, two-button radio. Brazil needed only a draw against Uruguay to lift the trophy at the ground they had constructed precisely for that purpose, but a late Alcides Ghiggia goal stole the moment away from the tournament hosts, and as Pele describes, his father was distraught.

“My mum took me away and said, ‘Leave your father alone; leave him in peace.’ There was silence everywhere. The noise of cheers and silence and radios turned up to full volume had disappeared into a void of silence.”

It has been nearly 63 years since that disappointment, and with the 2014 World Cup just over a year away, the Maracana has once again been readied for a celebration that, ideally, will have the current edition of the Brazilian national team accomplish what its predecessors couldn’t.

Sunday’s friendly match against England will begin the home stretch of that process, and while a court order issued Thursday temporarily suspended the encounter (the judge cited safety concerns in her ruling) it was subsequently lifted, allowing the game to go on as originally scheduled.

Count Michael Carrick among those who will be relieved at the reversal.

“How often do you get to play Brazil?” the England midfielder asked rhetorically in Tuesday’s England-Ireland match program. “I’ve never been before and the chance to play at the Maracana is unbelievable.” (Sambafoot)

His thoughts were echoed by Andres Iniesta, whose Spanish side will be facing Tahiti at the stadium next month during the Group Stage of the Confederations Cup.

“For any player to play in Brazil, in the Maracana, is unique, magical,” he said. (Goal)

And part of that magic, whether he knows it or not, was concocted on the very ground upon which the Maracana sits.

While there was significant pressure to build the stadium in Rio de Janeiro’s affluent Jacarepagua district, planners insisted—and intentionally so—on putting it in the hardscrabble Maracana neighbourhood, among some of the city’s most notorious favelas.

Misery and joy, dejection and dreams—all of it side by side and intermingling in a very human collage.

And what’s more Brazilian than that?