It is so, so insignificantly small in the face of everything else about the COVID-19 pandemic, but the fact that there are no sports happening right now makes everything else that little bit worse. We’re all trapped inside, scared and without our usual distractions. Our options for Live Sports Things Happening Now are basically watching race car drivers (and also sometimes Thibaut Courtois, for some reason) race each other virtually, or wondering how the New York Giants are going to screw themselves over in the NFL Draft this time.

Plus, even if sports in general resume sooner, the cancellation of the Copa América means we Brazil fans won’t be able to see the Seleção resume play until September at the earliest. So to provide a little distraction and keep this site from getting too quiet while we wait for soccer to return, I thought we’d take another stab at something we tried a few years back during the long wait between Brazil games but never finished: a March Madness-style bracket to determine the greatest goal ever scored for the Brazil national team, with the contenders chosen by you, the readers.

Here are the basic criteria I’ve come up with:

  • Any goal scored for the Brazil national team is eligible, regardless of gender or age bracket. This means goals for women’s teams and Olympic, U-20, and U-17 sides are fair game, as are goals in friendlies, unofficial tournaments, and whatever other weird things the team’s participated in over the years.
  • I do think goals for the senior Seleção should have an edge over goals for youth teams, and that’ll be reflected in the format for the bracket, which I detail below.
  • Own goals in Brazil’s favor are eligible too. A goal can be great because it’s inadvertently hilarious.
  • Ditto goals that shouldn’t have been given, like Luís Fabiano vs. Ivory Coast in 2010. I doubt such a goal would get many votes, but if it counted in Brazil’s favor, it’s on the table.
  • The definition of “great” is pretty loose here, but ideally I’d like to see aesthetic value (maybe that means beauty, maybe comedy, maybe schadenfreude) weighted more heavily than historical significance or lasting impact in the zeitgeist. If Carlos Alberto’s goal versus Italy in the 1970 World Cup final still ends up winning, it should be because it was a beautiful goal scored in an important match, not because it’s been immortalized as The Greatest Team Goal In World Cup History And Maybe Ever. Does that make sense? I don’t know if that makes sense.
  • There needs to be video of the goal available on a widely accessible platform like YouTube and the quality needs to be good enough that you can make out what’s going on. (This, unfortunately, probably invalidates footage from the early World Cups. Sorry, Leônidas.)

And here’s how I’m imagining the actual nomination, voting, and bracket format would work:

  • In the comments below, post video of goals that you think are worthy, and upvote others’ nominations if you agree with them. Ideally, post one goal per comment to make upvoting easier, and if you’re linking to a longer video or one that shows multiple goals, include a timestamp for the goal in question. Do make note of the context or significance of the goal if you think it’ll help its case—like if it decided a World Cup knockout game or something.
  • If there are enough goals, or enough confusion, to merit it, I’ll create a preliminary Google poll so that people can vote for their favorites (but I probably won’t, because this could degenerate into a mess real quick.)
  • The goals with the most upvotes will get seeded into a March Madness-style bracket. Goals for youth teams will go through a preliminary round, like how 16-seeds in March Madness have to face off against each other for the privilege of entering the main 64-team bracket. (I think any goals scored in friendlies for the men’s Olympic team would have to do this, since those games are fully U-23, but goals at the Olympics themselves will be seeded normally.)
  • From there, we’ll have a standard bracket, with a new post every couple of days allowing people to vote on probably 2-4 matchups at a time.
  • I don’t know if it makes any sense to split the goals up by “conference”—e.g. World Cup goals in one, Copa América goals in another, goals in friendlies in a third. Or maybe it might make sense to bunch them by type? Solo goals in one corner, elaborate team moves in another, long shots and volleys, etc.? Or by era? Let’s discuss this in the comments.

So get cracking, folks! I’ll leave this post up for a while to give people a chance to make nominations and vote. Hopefully we’ll be able to dig up some great forgotten goals to make things interesting. Shouldn’t be hard, given how obscure old footage of the youth and women’s teams can be. And, of course, let me know if you have any suggestions re: the format.

In the meantime, there are worse places to start than FIFA’s playlist of Brazil’s 100 greatest World Cup goals.