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One Influence That Did Not Make My List

By Ramas Ramas -
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Think about the last time a World Cup moment took your breath away. The chances are you were not in the stadium. You were watching a screen. So was your neighbour. So was someone in Brazil. So was a child in Japan. So was a grandmother in Senegal. All of us, at exactly the same moment, sharing the same feeling. Television did more than bring the match into our homes. It allowed millions of people to gasp, cheer and cry together. When Maradona scored in 1986, the gasp was felt across Buenos Aires, Naples, London, Cairo and Tokyo at the same instant. That is the quiet magic of television. The first World Cup to be televised was Switzerland 1954. A small number of Europeans watched grainy black and white pictures. Then colour arrived and the images came alive. Gradually the audience grew. Slowly the whole world tuned in. By 2022 in Qatar, around five billion people followed the tournament. That is more than six out of every ten people alive on earth. And the final between Argentina ...
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The Limping Angel

By Ramas Ramas -
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June 7, 1962. Viña del Mar, Chile. Brazil were defending champions. Everyone expected them to win again. The question wasn't if, but by how much. Second match. Pelé pulled a muscle. He was out of the tournament. The newspapers wrote that Brazil's dream had died with Pelé's injury. But there was another man in that team. Manuel Francisco dos Santos, popularly known as Garrincha and affectionately called the Little Bird. He was born with a crooked spine. His right leg bent inward. His left leg bent outward. Doctors said he could never play football. In 1958, he had been brilliant. But Pelé was the star. Garrincha lived in his shadow. Now the shadow was gone. Quarter-final against England. Garrincha scored twice. Header and foot. Brazil won 3-1. Semi-final against Chile in Santiago. 76,000 Chileans roaring. Garrincha dribbled past three defenders and scored. Then he dribbled past them again and scored again. He was sent off for retaliation. The final seem...
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The Boy Who Cried After Winning

By Ramas Ramas -
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Stockholm, Sweden. 1958. Brazil arrived carrying a wound that had never healed. Eight years earlier, in 1950, they had lost the World Cup final at home. In front of 200,000 people at the Maracanã. The silence that followed broke a nation. Grown men wept in the streets. Some never watched football again. Now they were back. With a new manager, Vicente Feola. A new philosophy. More disciplined, but still brilliant. But something was missing. The tournament began, and Brazil played well. They won their matches. But there was no spark. No magic. Then, in their third group match against the Soviet Union, the coaches made a decision. They put a boy on the pitch. He was 17 years old. Not even fully fit. His name was Edson Arantes do Nascimento. The world would come to know him as Pelé. He didn't score in that first match. But he was a revelation. Fast. Creative. He moved like water across the field, flowing past defenders as if they weren't there. In the quarterfinal against Wales, he...
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Is the UN Relevant?

By Ramas Ramas -
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Is the UN Relevant?  A question I posed to some of the groups.  I got mixed reactions.  My thoughts on this issue (by no means authoritative) are as follows. I've been thinking about the UN lately.  Is it relevant? My view—we should seriously consider dismantling it for the following reasons. The UN system, including the core budget, peacekeeping operations, and specialized agencies, costs billions of dollars annually. Sadly, this huge investment has failed to deliver on its primary purpose of maintaining international peace and security.  Since the end of WW2, the UN has failed to prevent or resolve the Korean War, Vietnam War, Cyprus war, Rwanda and Gaza genocides, Serbian massacre, wars in Iraq, Libya, Syria, and Afghanistan, the Arab-Israeli wars, Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, and the US invasion of Venezuela. These are just the major conflicts. Countless smaller ones, like the Thailand-Cambodia crisis and China's invasion of Vietnam, show the same pattern. ...
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The Rain That Changed Everything

By Ramas Ramas -
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Bern, Switzerland. Nine years after the war ended, Germany wasn't supposed to be there. Their country was divided, their cities still in ruins. Many of their players had been soldiers just years before. Some had been prisoners of war. But here they were. In the World Cup final. Across the pitch stood Hungary. The greatest team in the world. They hadn't lost in four years. 31 matches without defeat. They had humiliated England 6-3 at Wembley, then 7-1 in Budapest. They crushed the Soviet Union. They scored goals no one had seen before. Led by Ferenc Puskás and the brilliant playmaker Nándor Hidegkuti, they were called the Magical Magyars. Newspapers predicted they would win easily. Germany had barely qualified. They had lost 8-3 to Hungary earlier in the tournament. The final began as expected. Hungary scored in six minutes. Then again in eight minutes. 2-0. The dream was dying before German eyes. Then the sky opened. Rain poured down. The pitch turned to mud. German...
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The Silence That Shook a Nation

By Ramas Ramas -
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  July 16, 1950. Maracanã Stadium, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. A draw would make Brazil World Champions. Nearly 200,000 people packed in. The largest crowd in football history. The newspapers had already been printed.  "Brasil Campeão do Mundo"  - Brazil: World Champions. The mayor had prepared a victory speech. The trophy ceremony was scheduled. Musicians were ready with samba songs. Brazil led 1-0. Then Uruguay equalized. Then, with eleven minutes left, Uruguay scored again. The Maracanã went silent. Not the silence of shock. The silence of grief. When the final whistle blew, 200,000 people walked out without speaking. The newspapers that had printed "Brazil: Champions" were never distributed. They were burned. Barbosa, Brazil’s goalkeeper in 1950, said years later that in Brazil the maximum prison sentence was 30 years, yet he felt he had been paying the price for Brazil’s defeat for far longer. The poet Nelson Rodrigues called it "our Hiroshima." Brazil wo...
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What Happened to the World Cup?

By Ramas Ramas -
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June 1938. Italy wins the World Cup in Paris. Three months later, Hitler invades Poland. The 1942 World Cup was supposed to be held in Germany. It never happened. The 1946 World Cup? Cancelled. By then, stadiums across Europe had been bombed. Players were dead or scattered. Football became irrelevant. But the trophy remained in Rome. Four kilograms of solid gold. And the Nazis were confiscating precious metals, melting them down for the war effort. When they occupied Rome in 1943, Ottorino Barassi knew what would happen if they found it.  Barassi was FIFA's Italian vice-president. Tall, quiet, a lawyer. Not a player. Not a coach. Just someone who loved the game. One night, he went to the federation headquarters, took the trophy, and left. He didn't hide it in a vault or bury it in a garden. He put it in a shoebox and slid it under his bed. Through air raids and street battles, the World Cup trophy sat in that shoebox. His family knew. No one else did. ...
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