The World Cup, like any collective phenomenon that mobilizes public opinion and mass reactions, has both a manifest and a latent content, susceptible to interpretation.
The symbolism carried by the Jules Rimet Cup created particular expectations in two European nations: Germany and England, historically linked by a complex relationship; and in three Latin American countries: Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, all undergoing similar processes of social change, grappling with disintegration, uncertain due to the breakdown of links between people and institutions, and the confusion of roles between individuals and structures.
For Brazil, Uruguay, and Argentina, marked by underdevelopment, intervening in the tournament meant competing with other cultures, emerging from infancy. Winning meant integrating into the block of developed countries, gaining power and prestige through leadership.
The sense of belonging to the nation had been fractured by disintegration, shifting then to the club and national team, which was magically considered the solution to the hoped-for resolution. The political ideal, often frustrated, turned towards sports. The rupture of a total image of the country, coupled with the urgent need for firmer, closer belonging, triggered this shift.
The Europeans, particularly the Anglo-Saxons, driven by their own loss of power, acted with a colonialist mindset, where conspiracy and arbitrariness were the usual tactics. On our part, driven by resentment over our chronic dependency on the dollar and the pound, we entered the game: discovering too late that their strategy had outsmarted us, and being unable to anticipate it, triggered violent popular reactions in the face of the failure of the "viveza criolla" (sharpness, cleverness).
English imperialism was always felt by South Americans as the harshest system of domination. The insecurity brought by such frustrations causes collective attitudes and movements of opinion that stir up old resentments, like a family argument reigniting past grievances. The uncertainty paradoxically increases the aspiration rate and decreases resistance to frustration. Thus, although at first, based on objective facts, we believed in the possibility of winning a match, later we couldn’t bear being eliminated from the tournament.
Basic fears were then mobilized, fueled by the idea that a conspiracy had been plotted against us. On the political front, these three American countries experienced the decay of liberal regimes, which heightened ethnocentrism and nationalism, represented by groups and elites of an authoritarian nature, who were associated with strength and security.
The national team, initially fragmented and ineffective as a reflection of the social, economic, and political events of its departure, suddenly transformed, thanks to an organizing leader, into a coherent and effective group. The Argentinians thus felt their internal image of the country changing, and new expectations were born.
With frustration came acute conflict and a climate of tension. Defense mechanisms were set into motion, such as denial (claiming to be the moral victors of the tournament) and rationalization.
Summarizing the collective behavior surrounding the World Cup, from the spectator's perspective, we can highlight a first event that was perfectly captured and disseminated by 108 media outlets in a way rarely seen, pointing out the discredit and inability of the team. This first period, now considering the team itself and its performance prior to the tournament, did nothing more than confirm the previous prediction, a prediction that, through the language used and the dissemination given, undoubtedly reached the targeted audience and also reinforced the hostility of the European press, helping to create the image of a disintegrated and impotent team.
In the second period, the World Cup itself, the "miracle" happened. The scene was set by the new Government. This image was then adopted by the team members, who integrated, overcame individualism, and transformed from a conglomerate into an operational group, where role confusion ceased to exist. Then emerged a goal, the possibility of winning, which was experienced as though we had already won the Cup. This "as if" became more manifest in last week’s reception… At that moment, a new act of magic appeared for the newcomers: a new President arrived, awakening old images, and entered the game.
Psychology of Everyday Life, 1966-1967