Brazil

No country turns play into identity quite like Brazil. The same instincts that made it football’s most decorated nation - improvisation, rhythm, quick feet - translate suspiciously well to quick fingers. Here is the honest picture of the country behind the green and gold.

What Brazil gets right

• It is the most biodiverse country on Earth: about sixty percent of the Amazon rainforest and the Pantanal, the world’s largest tropical wetland, are Brazilian.
• Five World Cups - more than any other nation - and the only country to have played in every single tournament.
• Its electricity is among the cleanest of any large economy, built on hydropower, and its ethanol program pioneered renewable fuel at national scale.
• Carnival in Rio is the largest festival on the planet, and samba and bossa nova became the soundtrack of an entire continent.
• It is an agricultural superpower: the world’s top exporter of coffee, soybeans, sugar and orange juice.

Where Brazil struggles

• Income inequality remains among the highest in the world; wealth and poverty live street by street in the big cities.
• Several urban areas fight violent crime rates far above global averages.
• The Amazon is under constant deforestation pressure, and protecting it is a political battle as much as an environmental one.
• Business bureaucracy is so notorious it has its own name - the “custo Brasil”, the extra cost of simply getting things done.
• Infrastructure thins out fast away from the coastal metros, and commutes in Sao Paulo rank among the longest anywhere.

Quick feet, quick fingers - if anyone can win a reflex duel on flair, it is Brazil. Pick a duel on the home page and test that theory live.