My Travels With the Curse of Maracanã

In anticipation of the World Cup, we sent the magazine’s contributing illustrator, Christoph Niemann, to Brazil in search of the soul of soccer. What he found instead is a curse that still hangs over the country, decades after the highly favored home team lost in the final game of the 1950 World Cup in Rio de Janeiro. In this animated storybook, Niemann meets this curse — and befriends him — and does his part to unmake that goal that has haunted Brazil for 64 years.