Entartete Farben — The Degenerate Color Panic Reaches the Seleção
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, then as sportswear regulation.
Once upon a time, a football jersey was just that: a shirt for playing football. But in today’s ideological color war, the Brazilian national team’s wardrobe choices have become the frontline in a battle of national identity, historic amnesia, and aesthetic hysteria. The battlefield? A red jersey.
Yes, red. That degenerate hue. That Bolshevik stain. That socialist smear. That carnival of communist contagion. Red — the color of ripe mangoes, revolutionary flags, and, apparently, Satan himself.
On May 26, 2025, just one day after assuming the gilded throne of the Confederação Brasileira de Futebol (CBF), Samir Xaud made his first executive order: Ban the red kit. Nike was told to halt production. The planned away jersey, a bold red ode to the 1914 team that first wore Brazil’s colors, was deemed inappropriate. A chromatic crime against the nation. An infiltration. A betrayal stitched in polyester.
History repeats itself, first as tragedy, then as farce, then as sportswear regulation.
The official justification? “Red has nothing to do with Brazilian football tradition,” said unnamed insiders, their mouths no doubt puckered from biting into a Marxist watermelon. Unofficially, the color red had committed the cardinal sin of association. With Lula. With communism. With the working class. With blood, perhaps. With menstruation? No one’s quite sure. But in the Book of Football Revelations, red had been marked by the beast.
And yet — here comes the punchline — the very name “Brazil” is rooted in the color red.
Derived from pau-brasil, the red-blush tree whose precious dye gave both profit and identity to the Portuguese colony, Brazil literally means “the land of red.” That same vibrant tone, extracted and exported in violent colonial cycles, is now too ideologically inappropriate for the national football team. Imagine banning your namesake because it doesn’t match your political alignment. Imagine hating red so much you forget it’s in your bloodstream — historically, linguistically, and materially.
Welcome to the age of Entartete Farben — Degenerate Colors. In the great spirit of the Third Reich’s “Entartete Kunst” campaign of 1937, where anything avant-garde, Jewish, leftist, or too jazz-adjacent was declared a threat to the moral fabric of the nation, Brazil’s football elites now take up the palette of paranoia.
Should yellow and green also be banned, now that they’ve been hijacked by Bolsonarism? What about blue — too royalist? White — too surrenderish? Black — too punk, too protest, too poor?
Where will it end?
At this pace, we may soon witness the creation of the Comitê de Higiene Estética Nacional, where artists, designers, and kit manufacturers will be forced to register their pantones with the state. Red: subversive. Pink: deviant. Purple: queer. Rainbow? A federal offense.
Imagine the locker room raids. The flag color audits. The children sent home from school wearing coral shorts. The denunciations whispered on WhatsApp groups: “Cuidado com ele. Usa vermelho.”
Forget VAR. We need color purity tribunals.
Meanwhile, in the real world, a man under investigation for falsifying public documents and medical reports in Roraima — yes, the very same Samir Xaud — is deciding which colors are ideologically acceptable on a football pitch. Quelle surprise.
But no matter. The red kit has been banned. Brazil shall be saved. The revolution averted. The jerseys will be blue. The sky will be blue. The oceans, blue. And the bruises? Still purple — but we’ll photoshop them out in time for the next press release.
And the people? The people will cheer.
Because in Brazil, it seems, you can be accused of corruption, perjury, or incompetence — just don’t be seen wearing red.
