John Carlin in his Most Bonito article:
“The bright, canary-yellow shirt of the Brazilian national team — the canarinho shirt, they fondly call it in Brazil — elicits feelings in soccer fans everywhere that unite reverence for Brazil’s unquestioned supremacy (it has won the World Cup, held every four years, five times in the last half century) with an affection, a warm sense of personal ownership, that transcends the sport’s inherent tribalism. Every neutral fan following this month’s World Cup will want Brazil to win, and every soccer-lover with a national stake in the competition will have Brazil as his second team. Soccer is the world’s biggest religion, cutting across race, faith, geography, ideology and gender like no other global phenomenon. Brazil is the religion’s favorite church.”