Even though Ancelotti’s beasts took a while to show their claws, Brazil arrives at their first knockout stage in the World Cup as favorites — at least for the bets. Eight houses consulted paid this Friday morning (26) from 1.65 to 1.78 for each real bet on the team’s victory. The “odds” for Japan’s triumph were much more seductive: from 4.6 to 5.25.
But even Zagallo’s broken Brazil in 1974, perhaps the worst team of all time at the start of a World Cup, were favorites against the best historical Japan. And, let’s all knock on wood, if we lose our hegemony even in this symbolic field, what will we have left?
The eternal environmental power that does not hesitate to drill oil wells?
In men’s athletics, at least in the long distance, the situation is very different.
There are 28 Japanese marathoners in the Top 200, and 81 in the Top 500 of the 2026 world league. The best is Suguru Osako, who clocked 2:05:59 in the Tokyo marathon, below her distance record, 2:04:55, in Valencia, just under three months earlier, in December. The best Brazilian marathon runner of 2026, Johnatas de Oliveira, is only 541st in the distance, with his 2:12:10 in Seville, in February.
(Just a comma, because Johnatas, as has already been said in this column, started on gravel, dividing his training time with that of his breadwinner, as a garbage collector in São Paulo. His marathon record is 2:10:43 in Hamburg, in 2023.)
In the marathon, Brazil had very high points at the turn of the 20th century to the 21st, first with Ronaldo da Costa, who broke it in 1998, in Berlin, with his 2:06:05, the record for the distance, which had already stood for ten years (not counting the pirouette at the finish line); and in 2004, at the Olympic Games in Athens, when Vanderlei Cordeiro took bronze despite being pulled to the sidewalk by the arrogant Irish priest.
The peak, it is true, came recently, in 2022, with the unfulfilled promise of Daniel do Nascimento, known as Danielzinho, who broke the Brazilian historical record for 42.2 km in Seoul with 2:04:51. Then, finally, Brazil surpasses Japan: the best Japanese time for the competition is the 2:04:55 of Osako, in Valencia.
Coach Wanderlei Oliveira, WO, perpetual friend of this column and a pioneer of running in Brazil, says that the Japanese school is based on discipline, companionship and, above all, large volumes of training. “They continue to train a lot of kilometers, do little interval training and run several marathons a year, which is not common in other countries. It is a tradition that comes from the time when the Japanese ran long distances to deliver letters and which culminated in the ‘ekiden’, the relay race.”
Running seems to be really embedded in Japanese life. Marathoner Yuki Kawauchi stunned the sport’s petit monde by winning the venerable Boston Marathon in 2018, in heavy rain and wind, with a time of 2:15:58. The detail is that Kawauchi has a profession every day, that of a school administrator, which makes him, one could say, an amateur athlete.
This did not stop the “citizen runner”, as he came to be known, from collecting records. In 2023, he became the first man to complete one hundred marathons with a time under 2:20. His personal best for the 42.2 km is from 2021, 2:07:27, at Lake Biwa, Japan. In 2026, he clocked 2:14:30 in Osaka.
For all this, here is my request: Mister, make the guys give their blood in this World Cup.
Errata: this column said here that Johnatas Cruz was an athlete sponsored by New Balance. In fact, he’s from Asics, the big… Japanese sports brand. Forgiveness.
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