Suffering when the national team wins is our fate.

The World Cup is not simply a football tournament. The World Cup is a political and emotional cauldron that reverberates with geopolitical developments full-time. The emotional burden of having an entire country cheering for a football team (for or against) is immense and weighs heavily on the minds of the more mentally weak players. 

The indifference of Brazilians towards this coup-plotting team could even work in their favor. Brazil has always played under immense pressure from fans and Globo (a major Brazilian media conglomerate). Just take a look at today's headlines in the major newspapers and you'll see: Brazilian sports journalism is nothing but arrogance, conceit, high-handedness, and undignified contempt for any and all opponents. It's rotten. That's why it's disgusting to even consider rooting for a deceitful and self-absorbed team (because the players and coaching staff also think they're the best in the world all the time). 

That's why defeat hurts so much. That's why it always hurts. I rooted a lot for the Brazilian national team, but, I regret to say: I've grown up. There are other more interesting things to do in life. 

Let the children cheer. The utopia of happiness is age-related and generational. The world dreamed of by a child is not the same world dreamed of by a 'non-child' (I don't like the word 'adult'), even though both should have the dimension of the impossible and the ideal of humanity inscribed in Oedipal love.  

The earth is a ball and the mother is a ball. In the end, we all seek the same thing: the warmth of the womb is three goalposts with a net at the bottom (or a welcoming and egalitarian democracy).

 For some, it's death and totalitarianism. It's that old story: did Mr. João Roberto Marinho breastfeed? 

Okay, enough with the digressions, Count. Enough. Get straight to the point, you goat. I will. The subject is prognosis. 

As I was saying, the World Cup isn't a sporting tournament, it's a political, psychoanalytic, and sociological barometer. Yesterday, for example, I predicted (I swear) Modric missing that penalty. Why did I predict it? Let me explain. 

The Croatian player was one-on-one with an open goal. He was brought down. He could have jumped (using his peripheral vision) or even tried to push the ball away with his knee, as he was on the ground. He preferred the whistle. The referee should have sent off the Dane. He only gave a yellow card (and nobody said anything). Everything was wrong. The pass came from Modric, who had been ineffective. 

When Modric received the ball with that melancholic, operatic violinist look, I thought: "Poor Modric, he's going to miss." And so it happened. Why did I foresee this mistake? Because all the "emotional semiotics" of the game demanded a decisive "mistake." For the team's star player to have to decide the game in the 37th minute of the second half is a huge responsibility. It's the whole story of the individual that comes down to that fraction of a second.  

Football is the most emotional of sports. The highly technical player ends up being a supporting actor in a dramatic process where grit and irrationality prevail. Without players of grit by his side – to do the 'manual labor' of containment and 'aggression' – the technical player becomes an 'ornament', a decorative and useless totem like Temer. 

So today we'll have a nerve-wracking test for both Mexico and Brazil. It's arrogance versus dreams, the 'pariah' in football boots versus the emerging nation, the devastated country versus the reborn country. This counts for a lot. But rest assured, because it counts in favor of the Brazilian team. 

What is the political semiotics of the moment? The semiotics of pain and the prolongation of pain. The Brazilian coup is a coup that 'lasts'. It is the antithesis of coups (because coups are coups: they are quick and disruptive).  

Well then. Logic dictates a prolongation of the agony of ambiguities. Brazil will go through Mexico to increase the pain of Brazilians facing the impossibility of cheering for the Brazilian national team. It is written and it is defined. 

Everything indicates that Brazil will reach the final of this World Cup. And then, whether they win the title or not will be just a detail. Certainly, they will lose to their final opponent, just as they lost to France in 1998, devastated by the disorganization of the coaching staff and the blackmail of Rede Globo. Whoever is Brazil's opponent in the final can already start celebrating. Hopefully it will be Russia (I don't even know if that's possible). 

Brazil in this World Cup is the most sophisticated historical torture a people could suffer. I even think it deserves it. Or rather: it's a necessary conjuncture so that all our ghosts can one day be overcome: subservience, colonialism, inferiority complex, pseudo-patriotism, and paroxysm. Suffering while the national team wins is our fate, our free and historical reverse psychological treatment.  

I confess it's enjoyable to predict this scenario. I can sublimate the horror of seeing Brazilians cheering childishly for the national team once again and have fun with it all. Good game to everyone.