Remembering Defeat: Analysing Brazil's 1950 World Cup Loss in National Memory

This research aims to comparatively analyze the recollection of the memory of Brazil's defeat in the 1950 World Cup final, from 1970 to 2020. Hyperbolically considered as an unprecedented tragedy, the sporting failure generated frustration among fans and in the specialized media. The social and political context of the time, combined with the national team's efforts and results, produced various meanings, such as the shaking of belief in national identity, marked by collective mourning. We understand that the memory of this event has been revisited in subsequent decades, especially on the eve of subsequent World Cup editions. Methodologically supported by the History of the Present Time, which seeks in the immediate past some keys to interpreting the present, the analysis of correlations between football and politics in the respective periods is fundamental to the contemporary debate on the crisis of national identity. From a theoretical point of view, the relationships between memory and identity will guide this work. From an analytical perspective, the broad and complex reinterpretation of this event, carried out by different agents in the sports universe, stands out. As a research hypothesis, we understand that there have been memorialistic transformations of the 1950 defeat over the years, and that its current recollections tend to be minimized in the post-2014 period.