How We Play the Game: when prose turns to poetry (Wisnik)

 
 

"Brazilian soccer style transformed the “British and Apollonian” game into “Dionysian dance”; straight and angular European soccer became sinuous and curving as it took on the body movements of samba dancers and the martial art dancers and fighters of Brazilian capoeira. Freyre saw in it an affirmation of a tropical and mestizo culture that would enable it to reverse the stigmas of a heritage of slavery.

To the Italian filmmaker Pier Paolo Pasolini, the Brazilian style was “poetic soccer” based on dribbling and a nonlinear opening of unforeseen spaces, as opposed to the linearly responsible “prose soccer” prevalent in Europe. "

read the articly by José Miguel Wisnik

How We Play the Game - NYTimes.com