I thought the world ended when Brazil missed the penta
Green and yellow everywhere. A sidewalk full of tears. A girl finding out how much beauty and heartbreak the world could hold.
In 1998, we weren’t just watching the World Cup. We were living it.
Bandeirinhas—green and yellow little flags—were strung across the streets like prayers, the town square turned into an open-air living room with an audio system and fireworks on standby.
During a Brazil game, the streets emptied out completely: catechism postponed, doctor’s appointments rescheduled, even the priest wrapping up mass early to send us off with an encouragement to the national team.
For those 90 minutes, everyone was somewhere, worshipping a screen.
By the time Brazil made it to the final, the whole country had stopped pretending to be calm about it. We’d won four World Cups already (more than anyone) and this one, the fifth, had a name before we’d even won it: The Penta. Store windows were already selling penta t-shirts, people were already planning the parade. It wasn’t arrogance, exactly. It just felt like math: Brazil plus a final meant Brazil plus a trophy.
I remember the moments after that final match vividly. Brazil vs. France, on July 12. I was standing outside Aquarius, the only bar in town that we teenagers could call ours, watching the flags still fluttering in the wind like they didn’t know yet what had happened. And I was crying on the sidewalk, inconsolable.
The title we’d been so sure of, the one we’d already started celebrating, slipped away in ninety minutes. My friends were sad too, but I was always the one who took things harder. I felt it in my chest like a personal betrayal, a breakup I hadn’t seen coming.
The loss was stunning, but it was also strange, even wrong somehow, before it even started. Ronaldo wasn't himself that night, and the rumors were already spreading before kickoff: seizures, nerves, conspiracies, our golden boy unraveling in the locker room. By the time France's third goal went in, it didn't even feel like a game anymore. It felt like something being taken from us.
And then the street went quiet, except for me, sobbing like the world had actually ended.
My dad had a habit, during past World Cups, of walking away from the television during penalties. He said he could feel his blood pressure spike, that he needed to breathe or he might actually have a heart attack. That’s how seriously we all took it.
But the World Cup was intimate, too. Once every four years, our little town cracked open and the whole planet came pouring in through our screens. I watched people on TV who looked nothing like me, heard new anthems, stared at flags, memorized players' names I couldn't pronounce. The languages were the part I loved the most: the chants, the words I couldn't understand but somehow knew the meaning.
It was also one of the few times I saw my town unified by something bigger than gossip, politics, or God. For those few weeks, everyone carried around the same hope and the same fear, people you barely said hi to would high-five you in the bar after a goal. It stitched us together: kids, elders, teachers, the guy who barely spoke at the deli counter.
So when we lost, it felt like something cracked. That night, the town went still, everyone stunned, replaying the same three goals in the dark.
The next day, the bell rang. The square filled back up. The priest went back to preaching about eternal life instead of extra time. And me? I stopped crying, and I wrote it all down.
Because even in that moment of sorrow, I knew I was witnessing more than a match. I was a girl finding out how much beauty and heartbreak the world could hold, and how much of it could live inside one small town, for ninety minutes at a time.
✶ This essay is part of From the Beginning, a personal series built from my diaries, one memory at a time. You’re reading 1998. Each piece revisits the girl I was, the world I came from, and the details I didn’t know I was already saving.
