1950 World Cup Opening Ceremony

BaZmO*

Was just looking on line for all things World Cup and came across this little gem. Ahh....if only there was footage of this!!!

http://www.ireland.com/sports/soccer/worldcup2006/supplement/germany2006.htm

In his entertaining memoir, Refereeing Around the World, Arthur Ellis recalls the opening game of the 1950 World Cup in Brazil, an occasion which was also the opening day for the Maracana Stadium.

Brazil were to play Mexico. The local mayor, a man cursed with the prolix way of the breed, gave a speech which was inflicted on the masses via a dodgy public address system. Such was the noise that the referee couldn't hear the speech and blew the whistle to commence the match in the middle of it.

Now, a firing party who had been appointed to provide a 21-gun salute as the centre piece of the opening ceremony, panicked and got off their shots quickly, hitting the upper tiers of the new stadium and causing small amounts of concrete debris to dislodge and fall onto the people below. The gunfire provoked the release of hundreds of fireworks which spooked the doves of peace (or pigeons as Ellis insists they were) and soon the air was filled with gunsmoke and feathers, balloons, pyrotechnics and the screams of 150,000 lunatics.

The game had scarcely settled when Brazil scored. And then all hell really broke loose.

There were 15 local radio stations accredited to cover the game and a representative of each ran onto the field to interview the goalscorer.

Denied a clear shot of the celebrations, the ranks of photographers followed suit with a pitch invasion of their own.

Brazil won 4-0 and the occasion was deemed an epic success.

patmac

I was reading about this this morning in Brian Glanville's excellent book "The History of The World Cup". This was England's first World Cup and in their second game they played the USA who were expecting such a thrashing they went on the beer the night before the game. England dominated but the States won 1-0 with Gaetjens a Haitian scoring the winner. Gaetjens later "disapeared' in the seventies under Papa Doc. Full of gems and excellent stuff like how the Brazilians rested their star centre forward Leonidas (got 4 goals against Poland in an earlier game) and Tim their playmaker for the semi-final against Italy in the 1938 World Cup and promptly lost, so if your interested in all things World Cup you will find it interesting.

jester77

Following on that story about the English losing 1-0 to the US, I read a funny article a while back. After the English had lost a telegram was sent back to England reporting that they had lost 1-0. Whoever received the telegram thought that this couldn't be right and that there must be a digit missing so the they reported the game as 10-1 to the English :eek: Their optimism has never changed

Can't find the original article where I read it but it's mentioned here:
http://soccernet.espn.go.com/columns/story?id=366616&root=worldcup&cc=5739