💥 Brazil’s biggest rivalries

This Sunday, Fluminense host Flamengo in what is undoubtedly the most internationally celebrated of Brazilian football rivalries. But, by football standards, fans outside the country will be surprised to know that the famous Fla-Flu is eclipsed by dozens of other derbies across Brazil — and it isn’t even the fiercest rivalry in Rio de Janeiro.

In fact, the Fla-Flu was a contrived idea, glorified in the 1930s and 1940s by the first great mythmaker of Brazilian football, sports writer Mário Filho, who lends his name to the official title of Rio’s Maracanã stadium.

Through his newspaper columns, Filho aimed to make football part of Brazil’s national narrative, at a time when the Vargas government sought to tie together a number of cultural footholds to craft the country’s burgeoning identity.

The lore and excitement Filho generated around every Fla-Flu made them unmissable occasions in Rio de Janeiro and for those listening to the radio across the country. The term “Fla-Flu” even entered Brazilian Portuguese as a synonym for any rivalry or dispute.

But, once football truly took hold as the national pastime, other existing rivalries gained prominence — and new ones arose, quickly challenging the Fla-Flu’s status as Brazilian football’s be-all and end-all…

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