Sure, Ronaldinho and his countrymen may seem like nice, happy-go-lucky people. But tomorrow morning in Munich all bets are off. Here are 10 reasons why Brazil must fall to the Socceroos. Carmel Egan reports.
1. They are better than us. Everybody knows that when it comes to soccer they are the best in the world. With five wins 1958, 1962, 1970, 1994 and 2002 Brazil has more World Cup titles than any other nation. It's time they shared the glory around.
2. They are bigger than us. Everything about Brazil is big, its foreign debt, its wealth divide, its crime rate and its size.
The sixth largest in landmass and fifth most populous country on earth, Brazil occupies 49 per cent of South America.
We can be especially resentful that it is 925,115 square kilometres larger than Australia, which is the seventh largest country in the world.
3. They harboured Nazis and Ronald Biggs. Financially comfortable but morally bankrupt families harboured Auschwitz's Angel of Death, Dr Josef Mengele, for years until he drowned in 1979 without ever facing justice. An inquiry later found that the postwar military government in Brazil gave sanctuary to nine known Nazis.
Then Ronnie Biggs turned up. Biggs was doing time for his part in the 2.6 million pound Great Train Robbery of 1963 when he escaped in 1965. After a side trip to Melbourne he sailed off to Rio de Janeiro where he was found in 1974. British police could not extradite him because his girlfriend was pregnant and their son would be a Brazilian citizen.
Brazilian authorities even allowed him to corrupt those nice young Sex Pistols by recording a video with them in the late 1970s.
4. They are destroying the planet. The Amazon rainforest is known as the lungs of the world, but between May 2000 and August 2005 it is estimated that Brazil lost more than 132,000 square kilometres of it.
Since 1970 more than 600,000 square kilometres of Amazon rainforest have been destroyed. Lamentably, Brazil gave Sting another reason to hog the stage when he launched the Rainbow Foundation to raise awareness of the impact of deforestation on indigenous communities.
5. They don't like each other. So why should we like them? Neo-Nazis regularly roam the streets of Sao Paulo looking for street children, punks, homosexuals and Nordestinos (impoverished natives from Brazil's north-east) to rough up and kill. Brazil reportedly has the highest rate of homosexual murders in the world: 1830 homosexuals and transvestites were killed between 1980 and 1999.
Sao Paulo has the highest per capita murder rate in the world. Roughly 66 people per 100,000 are murdered each year against the also extraordinary national rate of 26 per 100,000.
6. Theyve got rhythm. While we were toe-tapping to the foxtrot, Brazil was bumping to the samba. It gave birth to Carmen Miranda, mixed bolero with African rhythms, developed the bossa nova and gave us the lambada. Then they toss it all together in the world's biggest street party in Rio de Janeiro every year.
At least we've got Moomba.
7. They don't need us. Brazil is one of the few countries in the world that could get by without the rest of us. It could be an economic powerhouse, if it were ever able to overcome its internal problems. It has enough mineral, energy resources and food to produce all it needs and enough people (184 million) to consume the final product.
Unfortunately, corruption, uncontrolled criminal violence, hyper-inflation and frequent economic upheavals mean they must rely a little longer on the benevolence of the IMF and World Bank.
8. Theyre a bad investment.
Twenty-two per cent of Brazilians live below the poverty line. Officially, unemployment is higher than 11 per cent, although it's doubtful that includes the many millions living in appallingly impoverished shantytowns.
But that hasn't stopped foreign investors who thought they were getting a bargain by snapping up beachfront apartments in Rio for between $US25,000 to $50,000, only to see their property values fall even lower.
9. Nuts and bikini wax. The country is named after the nut. The name comes from brazilwood trees and was chosen by the Portuguese in 1494.
The bikini wax was created by four Brazilian sisters who opened a beauty salon in New York. Their radical wax gained popularity among formerly hairy Manhattan trendsetters and became a global phenomenon.
10. They are the Collingwood of South America. Other South Americans regard Brazilians as a race apart. Although they are the only Portuguese speakers on the continent, their use of the language makes it the eighth most spoken in the world. Although Brazilians can understand some Spanish, the other South Americans claim not to understand anything the Brazilians say.
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