THE name of the street is Rua Paissandu. Located in Rio de Janeiro’s upscale Flamengo neighbourhood, the street features one Augusto’s Paysandu Hotel.

When 64 years ago Brazil last hosted the World Cup, this was where the Uruguay team stayed. This is the hotel where they plotted the demise of the hosts in the final of the 1950 World Cup.

Alcides Ghiggia’s 79th-minute winner helped Uruguay to a 2-1 victory at the Maracana Stadium — a tragedy known as the Maracanazo.

It took Brazil years to recover but even after winning five World Cups following that defeat, it remains unforgotten.

And Augusto’s Paysandu Hotel proudly declares that this was the place where the Uruguay team stayed.

RAUL Augusto smiles as he talks about the Maracanazo.

“It’s a part of history,” the hotel’s Director Raul Antonio Mattoso Augusto tells Dawn. “It’s a privilege for my family to be the owners of this hotel.”

Raul is 39 and his parents bought the hotel in 1974 but they came to know about the history through two employees of the hotel who were working there when Uruguay stunned Brazil.

A NEWSPAPER clipping on the walls of the hotel showing the Maracanazo.

One of them was Osmar Soares.

Soares, now in his late eighties, visited the hotel earlier this week on the request of Brazilian journalists to recall the memories of 1950.

“When the Uruguayans came here, no one knew them,” Raul tells, relating to what Soares told him. “They used to walk around this road and no one recognized them.”

THE floor where the Uruguayans stayed.

It all changed on that fateful afternoon of 16th July, 1950.

“In the morning, when the Uruguayans came for breakfast, they read the newspapers and immediately there was intense rage,” Raul tells.

Brazilian papers had profoundly proclaimed a victory for the Selecao.

“That only served to fire them up and then they did to Brazil is what will remain etched in the memory of Brazilians,” Raul added.

A BOARD on the hotel remembering the Maracanazo.

“Osmar told me that once they came back to the hotel, the Uruguayans were drunk. Drunk to the limit that when they came in for dinner, they started smashing things around.

“But despite all that, Osmar said they were really nice people, most of all Ghiggia – who he says was the joker of the team.”

While the rest of the Uruguay team stayed on the sixth and seventh floors, Ghiggia stayed on the third, in room 303.

“People still come to this hotel — specially from Uruguay — and ask for that room,” Raul says. “Brazilians remember them as ghosts. Maybe those who come here are looking for those ghosts of 1950.”

Published in Dawn, July 14th, 2014