Internet Desk: Sixty-six years ago Brazil hosted the World Cup and its team were hot favourites to win, but the final match was to produce one of the greatest upsets in the tournament’s history.
On 16 July 1950, the Uruguayan winger, Alcides Ghiggia, walked out in front of about 200,000 Brazilian fans at the Maracana Stadium in Rio de Janeiro.
For Brazil, winning the 1950 World Cup was a national priority. The government hoped that football would unite the country and mark it out as an emerging international power.
As the centre piece, Brazil had built the Maracana, a huge new concrete stadium designed to be the biggest in the world.
About a tenth of the population of Rio de Janeiro crammed inside for the final game of the tournament – among them Joao Luiz de Albuquerque, then an 11-year-old schoolboy.
Brazil had scored 13 goals in their previous two matches, so like every other Brazilian, Albuquerque believed despatching tiny Uruguay would be a mere formality.
But, paradoxically, that Brazilian goal would turn the match in favour of the underdogs. Gradually, Ghiggia got the better of his Brazilian marker and, on 66 minutes, he put in the cross which led to Juan Alberto Schiaffino scoring the equaliser for Uruguay.
Then, with 11 minutes left, the winger got the ball again and bore down on the Brazil goalkeeper, Moacir Barbosa.
Unsure what Ghiggia would do this time, Barbosa hesitated, leaving a tiny gap between himself and the near post.
Albuquerque was among the shocked Brazilians. “It was like going to the house of a friend whose father or mother had died. That was the moment to cheer our team on, but instead we just went quiet,” he remembers.
The funereal atmosphere seemed to sap the will of the Brazilians, who failed to put Uruguay under pressure in the last few minutes of the game.
At the final whistle, many Brazilian fans wept inconsolably, while Albuquerque was completely stunned. “I remember we didn’t move for 10 or 15 minutes. I don’t remember the World Cup coming out or anything. I just thought the worst thing in the world had happened to me,” he says.
On the pitch, there were also tears. While the Brazilian players cried with grief, the Uruguayans wept with a mixture of joy and disbelief as they did a lap of honour of the stadium.
Sixty-six years later in the Rio Olympics its a chance again for the Selecao to right-off the Maracana curse as the final of the Rio Olympics football will be held in Maracana this time. Brazil will be desperate write history this time. They could have done this in 2014 but failed to reach the final of FIFA World cup which was too held in Maracana as they were thrashed by Germany on a margin of 7 goals.