João Vítor Marques
PhD student in Social Communication at the Federal University of Minas Gerais (UFMG), Brazil. Research interests include hate speech, xenophobia, and identities in football. Journalist for No Ataque. Covered the 2022 and 2026 World Cups and the 2021 and 2024 Olympics Games on-site.
Instagram: @joaovitornmarques
Twitter: @jvnmarques
Email: jvnmarques@gmail.com
You didn’t have to walk more than two or three blocks—whether in Houston, Dallas, Kansas City, Atlanta, or even Mexico City. A few steps through the city center or near the stadiums were enough to spot someone wearing that yellow jersey everyone recognizes. The catch? The Brazilian national team didn’t even play in those cities, and the people wearing the five-star shirt usually didn’t speak Portuguese.
World Cup after World Cup, Brazil remains football’s biggest international brand. The “beautiful game,” the titles, and the team’s historical significance uphold this status—even though Brazilians themselves perceive a clear crisis regarding the team’s technical quality and, above all, its identity. While foreigners wear the jersey with pride, we feel that things just aren’t the way they used to be.
A disconnection between the players and the fans, more than two decades without a World Cup title, the political appropriation of the jersey by the right and far-right… One could list over a dozen reasons to explain the roots and consequences of this sentiment. Yet, one particular reason stood out in 2026: an alleged “loss of identity” on the pitch. The Brazil of “artistic football” was knocked out with just 34% possession against Norway—a good team, certainly, but historically less significant on the footballing stage—a result that infuriated fans and analysts alike. On the bench sat the Italian Carlo Ancelotti—only the fourth foreigner to manage the Brazilian national team in history, and the first to do so at a World Cup.
The failure in the tournament’s Round of 16 opened the door not only to a technical debate but also to a range of narratives that could dangerously flirt with xenophobia. After all, what exactly constitutes this so-called “identity” of Brazilian football? This concept—so vital to research in the field of social communication—holds a special place in studies concerning the national team. Since the 1970s, a number of researchers—such as Simoni Lahud Guedes, Arno Vogel, Ronaldo Helal, Edison Gastaldo, Hugo Lovisolo, Leda Maria da Costa, Álvaro do Cabo, and Francisco Brinati—have explored the connections between soccer, nationalism, and a certain sense of “Brazilianness.”
In this context, the very notion of the nation is discursively constructed as sociologist Ronaldo Helal argued in 1994, and the Brazilian national team emerges as a key symbol that has historically united people through a shared sense of imagined collective belonging. On the pitch, the team’s performance appeared to mirror the nation’s progress or failure in the broadest sense of the word, as noted in a 2022 study by Costa and Helal.
Scholars also analyze the period from the 1990s onwards as a time of crisis regarding national identification with the men’s team, highlighting the turbulence in the relationship between sport and nationalism in Brazil. More recently, analyses of frequent defeats on the World Cups have become more technical—focusing on the game itself rather than the idea of the nation: “what happened during the match?”, “who made a mistake?”, “what was missing?”, “in what aspects was the opponent better?”, “what could the Brazilian team have done differently?”
However, regarding 2026, there seemed to be an expectation that the relaxed attitude, fun, and broad smiles—stereotypical traits associated with Brazilians off the pitch—would be reflected on the field through a more attacking, dominant, and “beautiful” style of soccer. Yet, to what extent was this expectation purely technical, and to what degree was it amplified by the fact that a foreigner was in charge for the first time?
In recent years, dozens of foreign coaches have managed Brazilian clubs, leading up to Ancelotti’s arrival at the national team—a milestone for the squad with the most World Cup titles. This market trend sparked criticism and attacks from Brazilian-born coaches—such as Abel Braga, Antônio Lopes, Dunga, Vanderlei Luxemburgo, Emerson Leão, Oswaldo de Oliveira, Renato Gaúcho, and Mano Menezes—some of whom had previously managed the national team, albeit without much success.
This sentiment also resonated with certain journalists and fans. At times, it mirrors classic hate speech tactics—such as attacking or insulting an individual or group in a “veiled” manner, disguised as mere opinion. Whether or not such rhetoric qualifies as hate speech depends on a range of parameters that must be evaluated on a case-by-case basis—particularly when dealing with non-minority groups, such as Europeans in South America.
Regarding the discourse surrounding Ancelotti and the World Cup, the technical criticisms seem entirely valid: there is a consensus that the national team could have performed better. However, there is certainly room to question—and seek empirical data to understand—whether there is something beyond purely technical analysis driving the narrative about reclaiming “Brazilian identity.”
