Teixera himself had missed capturing the moment, but a colleague of his who was working for a Japanese magazine was confident he had snapped the exact second the flare hit the ground — near Rojas, but not actually hitting him. However, he was supposed to send the film off to Japan to be processed in the magazine’s own lab. Insistent that the roll of film contained evidence of enormous bullshit, Teixera notified the president of the Brazilian soccer association — who also had the surname Teixera, just to confuse things further — and managed to pay the owner of a local photography lab to open in the middle of the night to process the film. The pictures were sold to a global agency and plastered across TV and newspapers. The gig was up.
What eventually came out was that Chile manager Orlando Aravena and vice-captain Fernando Astengo had pushed the team to do anything and everything they could to get the match abandoned, providing Rojas with the razor blade. Along with team doctor Daniel Rodriguez and Rojas himself, all were banned for life from competitive soccer, and the game was retroactively given the result 2-0 to Brazil — Chile was out of the tournament and internationally disgraced, plus banned from competing in the next World Cup USA ‘94.
Rojas had been in trouble before, having used a fake passport to play for the under-20s team, and been held back from the 1984 Olympics following anabolic steroid use, but lifetime bans are rare in soccer, generally coming after sustained underhand campaigns like match-fixing rather than one-off moments of desperate idiocy. Rojas had been one of Chile’s best ever goalkeepers, but now his career was over.
The event became known as El Maracanazo, after the Maracanã Stadium in which it took place. It roughly translates from Portuguese as “the disgrace of the Maracanã.” Yáñez’s specific obscene gesture — kind of flicking his balls forward while thrusting — became known as “doing a Pato Yáñez.” Rosenery Mello do Nascimento, the fan who had thrown the flare, was paid $40,000 to pose for Brazilian Playboy.
Brazil lost to eventual runners-up Argentina in the knockout stage, but four years later won USA ‘94. Aravena and Astengo kept working in domestic Chilean soccer, while Rojas found himself working in Brazil of all places, as goalkeeping coach for Sao Paolo, who he later briefly managed. Rather than being a figure of hate there, he was respected and forgiven for openly discussing and apologizing for his actions and moving on as best he could. Gomes, the Brazilian captain at the time, later said, “I met Rojas many years later, and he admitted his mistakes. He is not naughty but that day he had a lapse, a really bad decision.” Rojas’s lifetime ban was lifted in 2001 — he was 44 and too old for a playing career, but some dignity was restored.
El Maracanazo was a regrettable incident for everyone concerned, a stain on international soccer. Even Brazil, who was awarded the victory, would rather it hadn’t happened and that they had legitimately won the game. But desperation is a powerful thing, that somehow meant cheating in front of 140,000 people and the world’s media felt like it made sense.
Either way, there’s using your head, and then there’s using your head in a really dumb way.
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