Roots of the 21st century

I suppose this is the right time to read (or re-read) José Miguel Wisnik’s Veneno Remédio . It’s the most wonderful book on “soccer and Brazil,” published in 2008 by Companhia das Letras, and forthcoming in Spanish in Argentina (of all places…). The following is an essay I wrote a couple of years ago, which was published in the Brazilian magazine piauí, and appeared in English in the Portuguese Literary & Cultural Studies. Translated from the Portuguese by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux.