About

Sad Brazilian Fan is the nickname given to Clovis Acosta Fernandes, an elderly Brazilian soccer team fan whose teary-eyed reaction to their landslide defeat against Germany at the 2014 World Cup semifinal went viral in July 2014. The picture was initially spread to represent the sadness of Brazilian fans, but was later joined by an uplifting post-game photograph of him passing on the statue to a German fan.

Origin

On July 8th, 2014, the World Cup held a game between Brazil and Germany, which ended with Brazil losing 7-1. Television coverage of the game panned to the crowd and focused on a Brazilian fan sadly clutching a replica of the World Cup.

The same day YouTuber JoeBell^[1] uploaded a video titled "Sound of Silence (Original)" which featured the clip of the sad Brazilian while the Simon and Garfunkel song "The Sound of Silence" played. In less than a week the video gained over 3.4 million views.

Spread

Also on July 8th, Buzzfeed^[2] posted the picture with the title "The One Photo That Captures The Pathos Of Brazil’s World Cup Collapse." The still was featured the same day on WeKnowMemes^[3].

On July 9th, Redditor gabyxo posted a thread titled "This sad Brazilian fan was shown crying. But no ones published this beautiful picture of him handing the trophy to a German fan. He was quoted as saying "Take it to the final! As you can see, it is not easy, but you deserve it, congratulations" to the subreddit /r/worldcup.^[4] Within three days the thread gained over 3,000 points. The thread included a video, uploaded to the official FIFA YouTube channel^[5] on April 3rd, 2014, which identified the sad Brazilian fan as Clovis Fernandes who has gone to every World Cup game since 1990.

The same day The Bleacher Report^[6] published a post titled "Sad Brazilian Fan Reportedly Gave His Trophy to a Germany Fan" which featured a photo of Fernandes giving the trophy to a woman dressed in Germany's colors. The same day the story was reported on by many sites including E! Online^[7] and The Daily Dot.^[8]

Search Interest

External References