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PORTO ALEGRE, Brazil When a male child is born in Brazil, either a football or a football jersey is given as a gift.

If the little baby is lucky, he may receive both.

This shows how umbilical the connection between the Brazilian people and football is.

So if you are Brazilian and you dont like football, you might have some problems, especially if you are a boy.

The ball is an important part of childhood here. Some even sleep with them. And this huge connection is one of the reasons that made us so good at football. We spend a lot of time with the football, because other sports have few spaces.

The English created modern football; but Brazil created the most beautiful way to play it. They way the Brazil style grew isnt so pretty. Brought to the country by rich men, football was supposed to be played only by the elite. But the poor were also mesmerized with the new sport. However, when blacks were playing against whites there were fouls on people with colored skin. So the black people started to invent tricks with the ball to fool the whites and win the games.

This is the birth of the joga bonito style. But it goes further. We can play football anywhere: in the middle of streets, sidewalks, beaches any kind of surface. And we can play with anything. A proper ball is not needed, it is possible to turn paper, socks, smashed cans, bottle caps, all can turn into a ball and make a child happy. This full-time relation with football made us who we are in the football world.

But our cities are growing, more buildings are being built, the streets are dangerous places, and the space to play football freely is getting smaller. We still have excellent players, but the number of great ones is smaller than 20 years ago.

But although there is a massive football culture in Brazil, not everyone can play well. There is a lot of wooden legs (as we call people who are not that good here) around. One of them might be writing these lines.

This is an edited version of the original story by Valter Junior, ajournalist for Metro Brazil. He will occasionally write for The Korea Times during the World Cup in Brazil. ED.

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