Light-Foot Latins

A tense hush settled over the crowd that crammed Stockholm's Rasunda stadium. Out on the bright green turf of the soccer field, Brazil was dribbling to the attack. As they played their way toward the payoff rounds of the World Cup championship, the light-foot Latins had generated an awesome amount of ballyhoo. Now, in the semifinal game against France, Sweden's capital was getting its first chance to see just how good the Brazilian booters really were.

Brazil's outside right, Manoel ("Garrincha") dos Santos, nudged the ball delicately. A French defender charged. Casually, Garrincha faked his man out of his shoes and set up a neat play in front of the French goal. Then Garrincha took a return pass and booted away at the corner of the goal. He missed by inches, but the crowd settled back with a satisfied sigh. The final score (Brazil 5, France 2) was a foregone conclusion. Brazil's soft, pinpoint passes, incredibly skilled dribbling and booming scoring shots added up to the finest play yet seen in the longest and toughest soccer tournament ever staged.

Second-Story Women. The grind began in Vienna in late 1956 when Austria beat Luxembourg 7-0. Almost every month, for the next year and a half, somewhere in the world national teams were playing for the privilege of going to Sweden. There were 53 entrants at the start of the competition and, in some sections, politics eliminated almost as many as defeats did on the playing field. The Afro-Asian section collapsed early, in angry disarray. Nationalist China withdrew rather than play Indonesia, which had defeated Red China. Turkey pulled out, claiming it should have been classed as European, not Afro-Asian. Neither Egypt nor Sudan would play Israel, which finally became the section champ by political default, without playing a single game.

Once the top 16 teams got to Sweden, they ran into new hazards. Sweden's own team was one of the tournament favorites, and younger Swedish fans, combining patriotism with sophisticated self-interest, gave the visitors a delightfully wearing welcome. The Argentines were met by mobs of pretty blonde Swedish teen-agers eager to test the reputation of the passionate Latins. After too many friendly nights in their hotel and too many embarrassing afternoons on the playing field, the weary Argentines went back to South America thoroughly whipped. They were met by angry home-town fans armed with stones and overripe vegetables.

The Mexican manager moved his boys from the first to the fifth floor of their hotel, hoping to confound athletic females with a nocturnal talent for window climbing. The Mexicans, too, were defeated. But they were not the only ones to reap extracurricular rewards. One luminous Swedish night an enterprising reporter camped outside the Northern Ireland team's hotel at 2 a.m., counted four window-climbing girls in half an hour.

Fast-Money Fans. Day and night fans churned through Stockholm's streets and stirred up their share of excitement. Arrogant West Germans flashed their money in local bistros, drank too much, drove their sleek Mercedes cars too fast, even earned a rebuke from one of their own papers, Munich's Sueddeutsche Zeitung: "We are scared of you ladies and gentlemen--even more in the case of victory than the case of defeat." To the paper's relief, Sweden beat the Germans 3-1.

Brazilian fans commandeered taxicabs to chase attractive women through the streets of the city, took squatters' rights in hotel rooms, only moved on orders from the police. When their team won, they wrapped themselves in Brazilian flags and stormed the team's dressing room in defiance of the rules.

Homecoming Heroes. Almost incidentally, there was also some excellent soccer. And the final game was one of the greatest in the history of the sport: the unbeaten Brazilians collided with unbeaten Sweden, one of the roughest, toughest-tackling teams in Europe. Deft and delicate Latin footwork was put to the ultimate test.

Disciplined and undissipated, the Brazilians played as if their national honor was at stake. And indeed it was. Back home, President Juscelino Kubitschek had postponed important political conferences, Vice President Joao Goulart adjourned the Senate, great crowds gathered in the public squares to listen to kick-by-kick accounts of the games. Well aware that their country was headed for a long spasm of mourning if they lost, the Brazilians never gave the Swedes a chance. They won going away, 5-2. And they headed for home confident of being welcomed as heroes--beyond any argument, the finest soccer team in the world.

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