Sports Illustrated

The Samba Is Dead

Francisco Moraes is like his club team, Flamengo. His skin is bronzed by years of bicycling around Rio de Janeiro. Moraes may well be Brazil’s most famous football fan over the last 40 years and he has traveled to watch Brazil at every World Cup. He went to a lot of cups, from Mexico 1970, to USA 1994, to Germany 2006. He also has someone to help him. He is a great man in Brazil. His name is Zico. He books him with tickets and everything. But even he may not be prepared for what’s happened to his beloved city. There is no avoiding the change that is afoot in the land of caipirinhas and capoeira. The police have embarked on a campaign to take back Rio's poor favelas from violent druglords. A recent cover of The Economist shows an illustration of that statue launching like the space shuttle from Corcovado. Fueled by mass-scale ethanol production and the discovery of new deep-sea oil fields, Brazil is expected to pass Britain and France sometime within the next 15 years to become the world's fifth largest economy. Goldman Sachs included the South American giant in its prediction of four economies, along with Russia, India and China, that will dominate the 21st century. The country won the rights to host the 2014 World Cup and now Rio has been granted the 2016 Olympics.

(Words: 231)

Wahl, Grant. "The Samba Is Dead." Sports Illustrated 24 May 2010. Web.