Jair Bolsonaro and Brazil’s football fight

Brazil’s football strip is one of the most recognisable garments in sport, perhaps the most potent symbol of Brazil’s sizeable soft power. People who can’t name the country’s capital or president are familiar with the players who made the yellow jersey famous. Names such as Pelé, Sócrates, Ronaldo and Marta are known and loved the world over.

In Brazil, however, the iconic shirt is at the centre of a political tug-of-war. With barely a month until the presidential election, and two months until the World Cup, the fight over who ‘owns’ the jersey, a symbol appropriated in recent years by supporters of Brazil’s president Jair Bolsonaro, is one of the more colourful political dramas currently playing out in the South American nation.

Bolsonaro, a former army captain whose detractors compare him to Donald Trump, is a keen football fan. He is also an unapologetic machista, whose disdain of gays, women and communists is well documented.