Mário Filho

Mário Leite Rodrigues Filho , known as a publicist as Mário Filho , (born June 3, 1908 in Recife , † September 17, 1966 in Rio de Janeiro ) was a Brazilian sports journalist and writer. As a football journalist, he was style-defining. In addition, it is considered essential for the creation of the annual competition of the Samba Schools of Rio de Janeiro, the success of the Torneio Rio-São Paulo soccer competition and the construction of the Maracanã , which after its demise was officially named Estádio Journalista Mário Filho .

Life

Mário Filho was born in 1908 in the capital of the northeast Brazilian state of Pernambuco Recife, the son of Mário Rodrigues , who was a journalist for the local Diário de Pernambuco . When he was elected member of the federal parliament in 1912, the family moved to the then capital of Brazil, Rio de Janeiro .

Mário Filho began his career as a reporter for the daily A Manhã in Rio, which was now owned by his father. By 1926 he had specialized entirely in sports. Filho himself was an ardent supporter of football, which had established itself in Brazil since the turn of the century, and filled pages with coverage of what was still unusual at the time. In his father's second newspaper, Crítica, he revolutionized football coverage. He reported in detail about players and games and used lively language that also made use of the language images of the fans. He is also credited with co-founding the myth of the derbies between the leading soccer teams of the time, Rio Fluminense and Flamengo . Even the term Fla-Flu should go back to him.

After the death of his father, Crítica also came , Mário Filho himself ran the newspaper for a short time, to an early end. In 1931 he founded O Mundo Sportivo , the first pure sports magazine in Brazil, whose existence was very short. In 1931 he joined the newspaper O Globo , where he worked alongside the future media tsar Roberto Marinho , with whom he often played snooker .

In 1932 he founded the annual competition of the Samba schools of Rio de Janeiro, the Desfile de Escolas de Samba - nowadays one of the main tourist attractions of the city. This was originally intended as a break filler, since Mundo Sportivo lost a lot of readership between the relatively few and just as short football competitions. The actual idea for this, however, is attributed to the journalist Carlos Pimentel who works for Mundo Sportivo.

In 1936 he took over Jornal dos Sports , often just called JSports for short, from Roberto Marinho . JSports was the inspiration for the introduction of other sporting events, such as the Jogos da Primavera (“Spring Games”) for women's sports and football competitions for youth teams. An outstanding contribution here was the resumption of the Torneio Rio-São Paulo, which was held for the first time in 1933, between the leading clubs of both states. At the end of the 1940s, Mário Filho and the Jornal dos Sports were strongly committed to ensuring that the main stadium for the 1950 World Cup was not in Jacarepaguá , in the western outskirts of Rio de Janeiro, but in the Maracanã district just a few kilometers north of the city center orphaned grounds of the Derby Clube racecourse was built. His main adversary here was the journalist and city councilor Carlos Lacerda , later aspirant for the presidency and governor of the state of Guanabara . The Copa Rio , a kind of club world championship, launched in 1951 , was also based on an idea Filhos.

Mário Filho has also appeared as the author of numerous books. His work O negro no futebol brasileiro (“The Negro in Brazilian Football”), published in 1947, is still considered a classic in Brazilian sports literature. In it he describes the rise of the first black stars such as Arthur Friedenreich , Leônidas da Silva and Domingos da Guia . Sapo de Arubinha (“The Toad of Arubinha”), a collection of articles by Filho describing Brazilian football in the first half of the 20th century, was published posthumously in 1994 . In the 1950s he also wrote for the sports magazine Manchete Esportiva .

Mário Filho died of a heart attack in 1966 at the age of 58, leaving behind his wife Célia, whom he met on Copacabana Beach and who married at the age of 18 and with whom he was always very close. Célia committed only a few months after his death suicide . Shortly after his death, the Estádio Municipal do Maracanã was renamed in his honor to Estádio Jornalista Mário Filho (see Maracanã ). As early as the 1950s, he let the readership of Journal dos Sports know that his heart beats for Fluminense.

Mário Filho's brother Nélson Rodrigues (1912–1980), a well-known writer and journalist who also earned a reputation as the outstanding dramaturge in Brazil, described Mário Filho as "O criador das multidões" , the "creator of crowds", a nickname, which has been preserved since then.

Works

• 1927: Bonecas
• 1928: Senhorita 1950
• 1932: Copa Rio Branco
• 1934: Histórias do Flamengo
• 1947: O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro
• 1949: Romance do Football
• 1962: Copa do Mundo de 62
• 1964: Viagem em Torno de Pelé
• 1965: O Rosto
• 1966: Infância de Portinari
• 1965: Sexo na faixa de gaza
• 1966: Tráfico na gávea
• 1994: Sapo de Arubinha (Crônicas reunidas)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Bernardo Pombo: O Fla-Flu só é Fla-Flu porque existiu Mário Filho. O Globo, April 10, 2009
2. ^ Nélson da Nóbrega Fernandes: Escolas de Samba: sujeitos celebrantes e objetos celebrados. P. 77
3. ↑ Nova Fronteira, Rio de Janeiro, 2000, John Walter Foster Dulles: Carlos Lacerda: a vida de um lutador
4. ↑ Luciano Álvarez: Historia de Peñarol , 1st edition 2005, p. 433
5. ↑ Leonardo Filipo: Mário Filho escreveu o clássico da literatura esportiva brasileira. Globo Esporte, June 3, 2008
6. ↑ Martin Curi: Friedenreich. The forgotten football genius . Verlag Die Werkstatt, Göttingen 2009. ISBN 978-3-89533-646-1 . P. 86.

Web links

• Literature by and about Mário Filho in the catalog of the German National Library
• Leonardo Filipo: Há 100 anos nascia Mário Filho, o 'Criador das multidões'. Globo Esporte, June 13, 2008