HINO  NACIONAL  DO  BRASIL - "O Belo Hino"

Em 20 de junho de 2002, um dia antes do jogo Brasil e Inglaterra, o jornal inglês "The Guardian"(Londres, Inglaterra), publicou o texto a seguir, sob o título "O Belo Hino":

"...Try to be in front of your television by 7.20am tomorrow to catch another of Brazil's great gifts to human happiness. With France gone, Brazil now possesses the best national anthem left in the 2002 World Cup. First penned by Francisco da Silva in 1841, the Hino Nacional is arguably the jauntiest, cheeriest, most tuneful and most beguiling national anthem on the planet. It feels as if it comes ready composed from the opera house, and the influence of Rossini is hard to miss, though scholars now >think Da Silva may have cribbed the tune from a religious work by his teacher, José Nunes Garcia. Admirers have included the Creole composer Louis Moreau Gottschalk, who wrote a set of variations for piano and orchestra on it that are well worth hearing. In his book "Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life", our South America correspondent, Alex Bellos, explains how the Englishman Charles Miller first brought football to Brazil. But by the time Miller arrived at Santos in 1894, the Hino Nacional had long expressed in song what Pelé and his successors later expressed so wonderfully on the field. While the Marseillaise makes bellicose calls to arms, the Hino Nacional stirs national feelings by appeals to Brazil's "pure beauteous skies, " its sound of the sea and the flowers" of its "fair smiling fields". A natural setting for the beautiful game. When Rivaldo and Ronaldo put another two goals past Belgium on Monday, thus setting up tomorrow's quarter-final with England, the London Evening Standard led its later editions with a huge one-word headline. It said simply: BRAZIL! Quite a tribute. It is hard to imagine any other country whose mere name could be used in such a way with such confidence, in the certainty that the readers would react with pleasure and excitement. Were England to be playing Argentina, Germany, France or Italy tomorrow, expectation would be mixed with fear. To play Brazil, on the other hand, is simply a delight and an honour."