“Joga bonito” is a phrase utilized by Brazilians to explain how the sport of soccer needs to be performed.

“Joga” is the verb “to play” in Portuguese, whereas “bonito” means “lovely”. The philosophy revolves round particular person talent, creativity and a mindset to assault.

Soccer is not only a recreation in Brazil, it’s ingrained in tradition, with greater than two million registered gamers.

Rugby, however, nonetheless stays an unknown sport among the many majority of the individuals from the South American nation, even with Brazil making their debut on the Girls’s Rugby World Cup in opposition to South Africa on Sunday.

Brazil, who’re the lowest-ranked crew on the World Cup in twenty fifth, have solely performed 16 Assessments of XV-a-side rugby and celebrated their first win in 2023 over Portugal.

Regardless of the huge distinction in participant pool, sources and international triumphs, the rugby-playing mindset stays the identical as that in soccer.

“They’ve absolute velocity and are at their very best when they’re decisive and browse what is occurring in entrance of them and react within the second,” Brazil girls’s sevens coach Crystal Kaua informed BBC Sport.

“I at all times say it’s like driving in Sao Paulo [which has 12 million inhabitants]. With the motorbikes, should you see area then it’s important to take it. They don’t seem to be large so they need to make sensible and quick selections.”

To qualify for the World Cup, Brazil needed to defeat Colombia within the South American play-off – a hurdle they’d failed at six occasions beforehand.

With the ladies’s sevens crew thriving on the World Sequence, the choice was made to push for qualification by bringing of their sevens stars for the play-off recreation, leading to a snug 34-13 victory.

Among the many 32 gamers chosen for the World Cup, 11 have competed in at the least one Olympic Video games.

Fly-half Raquel Kochhann, who has solely six caps in XVs, was a type of gamers that head coach Emiliano Caffera approached to assist seal qualification.

Just like the overwhelming majority of youngsters in Brazil, Kochhann’s dream was to play skilled soccer, however harm ended her hopes.