Se Acaso Você Chegasse

Does anyone else feel like premier league soccer has hit a zenith?
Like the quality of play is so high
Whole squads are chock full of superb players
It feels like we are hitting some kind of peak efficiency at finding and developing football talent globally

We’ve been in a spiral of descent since Brasil 70 and still show no signs of hitting rock bottom

The skill of play seems to have really risen
I’ll stop beating the dead horse but would love to hear opinions on the matter

https://youtu.be/M5HbmeNKino

https://youtu.be/vXrJ6ECUqMU
The notorious KDB would like a word

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_OlVT18hG6c
Q.E.D.

I mean, just try imagining a divine diva like Elza putting up with a torrent of hate and death threats because she was so madly in love with….this goofy, sauceless choirboy??!??

What a joke
Case closed.

Since some of you seem not to get it
This was written by Mane Garrincha:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5lVLpVr92gQ
How many sambas has Kevin-deBruner-or-whatever-his-name-is written?
Elza Soares was one of 10 siblings in a family who lived in Moca Bonita, one of the first favelas in Rio
Located on its west side, in the neighborhood of Padre Miguel
Home of the Mocidade samba school (she remains to this day the school’s #1 icon, idol, and fan)
Her family was dirt-poor, and she was beaten ruthlessly by her dad
She was forced to marry at age 12, and had a baby at 13
Her baby was sick, they had no money
She decided to try out for an amateur hour on the local radio station
She had to sneak out to the station to do so, her family was adamantly opposed
When she got there in her tattered clothes, the radio host (the great brazilian composer Ary Barroso, who wrote perhaps the most famous samba of all time Aquarela do Brasil) looked her up and down
“What planet did you come from?” he quipped, and the live studio audience started laughing
She looked him straight in the eye and responded flatly: “I came from Planet Hunger”
The audience shut up
When she finished singing, Barroso declared to the dumbstruck audience in the studio and over the air “ladies and gentlemen, we have just witnessed the birth of a star”
But the real world of 1940s Brasil was not classical Hollywood cinema
Her sick son died later that year
By the time she was 18, she had lost another two children and her husband was sick was tuberculosis
To make ends meet, she worked in a psych ward, and for many years at the Veritas soap factory in Engenho de Dentro
By 21, she was widowed with a daughter; since she had to work all day, a couple from the neighborhood looked after the baby
But they decided to kidnap her, run away, and raise the baby on their own
Elza would spend 30 years searching for her lost daughter
In 1990, they finally reunited and now have a good relationship
Elza ended up forgiving the kidnappers, and they never did any jail time
Two sons had died of malnutrition; daughter kidnapped; four other children to raise
In 1959, she got an audition with the greatest brazilian label of the time, Odeon, to sing Lupicinio Rodrigues’ “Se Acaso Voce Chegasse”
When she got to the studio, she saw a huge breakfast spread there
She says she spent the whole recording thinking of how she could take home as much of the food as possible to feed her family
Her singing didn’t suffer
Odeon ended up putting out the 45 and it became a big hit
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=74B0AOD5Ni0
You can see why
It remains one of her most requested songs to this day
Correction: originally released as a 78
What an embarrassing slip up
I beg forgiveness

What a voice
Fitzgerald-esque

Like no other

The Fitzgerald in question being Ella

As opposed to Edmund?

Or F Scott
She is a great counter argument to the idea that our ability to find talent increases with time

I’m glad you’re coming around
ok, back to the heart of the story
In 1962 the World Cup was in Chile
Elza is chosen to be a “madrinha” (kind of a queen/cheerleader/mascot) of the Selecao
So she travels with them to Chile
Pele is on the team but he gets hurt early and misses basically the whole tournament
The real star of the team is Mane Garrincha
Arguably, the greatest player of all time; inarguably, the sauciest
He basically invented half the dribbles and moves that came after him
Garrincha leads the team to a repeat world cup (defeating a great Czechoslovakian team in the final, 3-1)
With Brasil’s jogo bonito having to overcome all kinds of thuggish anti-futebol in the most violent cup ever
With the exception of Brasil 70 (the greatest selecao of all time), it’s been basically all downhill since then
?
During the cup, Garrincha and Elza began a poorly-kept-secret romance
Among the issues: Garrincha was married
He was also a very heaver cachaca drinker
Elza was implacably persecuted – as a home-wrecker, man-destroyer, society-corrupter
I don’t mean like she was “cancelled”
We’re not talking about some trashy articles in the Sun
She was a woman, poor, and black
And accused of upsetting all of Brazil’s elite traditional values
Garrincha’s friends, families, and fans (ie, all of Brazil) attacked her
Garrincha eventually left his wife (with whom he had 8 kids) and married Elza in 1965
Yeah, that didn’t go over well
People threw shit at her in the street
She received countless death threats
Oh, it didn’t help that she had also kind of had a fling with Joao Goulart, the president who was deposed in the coup of 64
So Bagetron, you can throw Marilyn into the mix with Ella
What a woman
So she’s crucified as the femme fatale of the country’s biggest star, but ALSO is in dicey political waters
She is unrepentant about her affair with Garrincha
Even today, she considers him the love of her life (though it was a toxic relationship replete with alcoholism and domestic violence; she left him after a particularly brutal episode in 77, and he died–of cirrhosis of the liver, of course–in 83)
My music is art, and his football was art, she said
“You only need to watch his games to appreciate that his playing was true art”
She now laments the demise of futebol-arte
Don’t we all
He wrote at least 2 sambas for her
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qga5VpP-wlo
And Pe Redondo (“round foot”)
And she flouted the scandalized press and public with songs about being “the other woman”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6z4gsEHmfFE
And “impossible love”
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y06fn1tVqaY
Elza did not never give no fucks about “o que dirao” (what will they say)
More tragedy: Mane was driving drunk and crashed between Rio and Sao Paulo in 1969
Elza’s mom was in the car and was killed
Racked by rabid jealousies, affairs, drinking, violence, and the guilt/blame around the tragic accident, their relationship ended
Garrincha went to Sao Paulo, Elza to Rio with the kids
The separation didn’t last
They got back together and bought a new house in Rio
Where Elza was considered a “bruxa” (a witch) and hounded constantly
Their house was shot up
One day, she got an anonymous letter in the mail:
“You have 24 hours to get out of the country!”
Fearing for herself and her kids, she packed up and was “self-exiled” in Italy
She and Garrincha lived there for 6 years
She eventually returned to Brasil, but tragedy followed her
Her only son with Garrincha was also killed in a car crash at the age of 9, coming back from a visit to his father’s hometown
There’s of course so much more musically, like her work with Wilson das Neves
E.g.: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5Md7ye_XYQQ
In 2020, she was finally the “enredo” of her beloved Mocidade Independente de Padre Miguel’s carnaval parade
They finished third