Why Brazil ... so Good?

[Tigers_eye]

For years I could not understand why Brazil keeps producing these great footballers who dominate the world. Why not Uruguay (history), China-India (population), Russia (toughest conditions living) or England, France with all the technology on their side??

Following article gives as a great insight to the question why Brazil??
I would cut and paste few lines from there.

Brazil. That single word has come to sum up the very best of football.
It stands for artistry, inspiration and genius, for the combination of sublime individual skill and collective fluidity to create a whole that is both beautiful to watch and devastatingly successful...

The story of Brazil's domination of world football starts with the sport's uniquely important position in national life...

1994 Captain Leonardo says..

"In the 1930s, we started to organise a team to be competitive in the World Cup, and the 1950s were the beginning of this big dream to make Brazil the best international team in the world," he added.
Losing the final to Uruguay in 1950 was viewed as a national tragedy, but it only heightened the desire to win. And it led to a little-known aspect of Brazilian football. Believing they had let themselves down through personal weakness and a lack of research, the national side came to see comprehensive preparation and innovative tactics as crucial to success...

Having an entire nation obsessed with football and, by extension, winning the World Cup, has developed a degree of self-fulfilment.
Brazil is a big country - 183m people - and that is a lot of potential footballers, especially when, as Parreira says, "the whole of Brazil" is playing the game.
But for some in Brazil football is more than just a game.
It is, says journalist Lito Cavalcanti, a "life solution".
Many of Brazil's greatest footballers grew up in favelas - the shanty towns in its sprawling cities. Here, life is hard, and football offers an escape from the crippling poverty. "It's the only way out of misery," says Cavalcanti. "The lower classes have no effective schooling. They live in favelas where drug dealers control their lives. Sport is the only way out, and in Brazil football is the only sport people care about.

This is the part like the most:

In Brazil children learn football in a very different way from their European counterparts.
There are no leagues or competitive matches for young children - such a concept is seen as likely to hinder a player's creative impulses.
"The children play a lot but it's always very free," says Leonardo.
"We don't tell eight-year-olds you have to play right-back."
Parreira agrees: "We don't put them in a cage, say 'you have to be like this'. We give them some freedom until they are ready to be coached." And that sense of creativity is never lost.
"In Europe if you are dancing in the team bus before a World Cup final match it would be viewed as not concentrating," says Leonardo.

"But in Brazil if you are not speaking and laughing on the bus that is seen as being afraid.
"It is a different mentality. The idea of the system and the collective is different. The system is more important in Europe than it is in Brazil, even if we know it is important."
Brazil's success, though, stems from more than talent and the freedom to express it - behind Ronaldinho's gleaming smile lies hours of hard work.
"The English academy system is one where players are training for just four hours a week," says Brazilian football expert Simon Clifford. "Compare that to Ronaldinho when he was a 16-year-old with Gremio, where he would have been training for up to 20 hours a week. "

All in all an excellent read.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/foot...il/4751387.stm