© 2026 Boise State Public Radio
NPR in Idaho
Play Live Radio
Next Up:
0:00
0:00
0:00 0:00
Available On Air Stations

LISTEN: What São Paulo Sounds Like When The Seleção Scores

Members of Brazil's national team celebrate after scoring their third goal during the group A World Cup soccer match between Brazil and Croatia on Thursday.
Thanassis Stavrakis
/
AP
Members of Brazil's national team celebrate after scoring their third goal during the group A World Cup soccer match between Brazil and Croatia on Thursday.

Much of the stories over the past few days about the World Cup have been about how what is arguably the world's football mecca has given the every-four-year spectacle a less than enthusiastic welcome.

We like nuanced narratives, so here's a bit of video taken by Claus Wahlers, a software engineer based in São Paulo.

As he describes it, he turned on his video camera over his neighborhood. The streets were eerily quiet, because everyone was inside watching Brazil's national football team — or the seleção Brasileira — taking on Croatia on Thursday.

After every goal, the city came to life. Listen:

Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.

Tags
Eyder Peralta is NPR's East Africa correspondent based in Nairobi, Kenya.

You make stories like this possible.

The biggest portion of Boise State Public Radio's funding comes from readers like you who value fact-based journalism and trustworthy information.

Your donation today helps make our local reporting free for our entire community.