BELO HORIZONTE, Brazil — Their telltale faces represented the two sides of Brazil.

One belonged to a pale and pretty woman with blond hair, the sort that popped up frequently on big screens during the World Cup. In the aftermath of Brazil’s 7-1 semifinal humiliation against Germany in July here, you came across her after she made her way from the Mineirão stadium to the high-rolling neighborhood of Savassi, where she sobbed as if she had just been rejected by her lover.

The other face belonged to a dark-skinned man and had been sculptured by hardship. Haggard, with leathery skin and bristly hair, he sat in a dive bar in the grim city center having watched Brazil’s loss on a small television. People like him had been priced out of tournament tickets, so you asked what he made of that result. He shrugged, sipped his beer and evasively said that at least the club scene would soon be returning. That was the soccer he felt a part of.

Two faces. Two sides of Brazil. But what they shared was their unremarkable city, Belo Horizonte.

It is a place that many rarely thought of before that day in July because, quite frankly, to the wider world there was no reason to come across it unless you passed through on the way to somewhere else. An occasional soccer nerd might point out that it was the setting for Joe Gaetjens’s goal when the United States beat England in the 1950 World Cup, and the locals will say it is famed for its 12,000 bars — more per capita than anywhere else in Brazil. But after that game in July, it seemed to have found its niche, destined to be known forever as the scene of the most heinous of soccer crimes.

Yet less than five months later, the memories of that World Cup annihilation have been shunted aside. Last week, out of the ashes, came the unlikely rebirth of Belo Horizonte. On Sunday in Savassi, thousands gathered beside pickup trucks blaring club anthems to celebrate the local club Cruzeiro after it retained the Brazilian league title. On Wednesday night in the city center, thousands of different fans partied, shooting off fireworks from homemade launchers made of toilet roll cardboard after the other local team, Atlético Mineiro, brushed aside Cruzeiro, 3-0 on aggregate, to capture the Copa do Brasil for the first time.