>>150088671
We never had a cancha or hincha culture. We can't look at outliers in the former largest stadium in the world and assume the typical attendance average was in the 100,000s. That wasn't true even for the Rio clubs that played in the Maracanã regularly.
Of course, we had many problems back then. The competitions were disorganised, the country was even poorer than it is now, scheduling was a mess, and there were many forces at play that reduced fan interest in the games. But that doesn't change the fact that we never had the same passion and commitment as the Argentinians have.
If you ever go to the stadium with your father, your uncles or maybe your grandfather, you probably also know chanting is a relatively new thing in Brazil. Up until the late 90s, the only chanting you'd hear in stadiums would be the typical short chants like "vai morrer", "ei, juiz", "é campeão" or chanting the club's name in hot moments of the game (like "meeengooo" or "gaaaalooo"). Sometimes an adaptation of a very popular song would be adopted by the fans, "Vasco é o time da virada" and Fluminense's "A bênção João de Deus" come to mind. But those were very few and stadium atmospheres were mostly white noise, reactions to goals, tackles and missed shots, and very few minutes of chanting. It started changing in the 2000s, but the current standard we have for hinchadas, that you should sing many songs throughout the entirety of the games, wouldn't become a standard until the 2010s.

But I'll give it to you that the aesthetics used to be much better. Especially with the flares, paper and flags.

https://pt.wikipedia.org/wiki/P%C3%BAblicos_no_Campeonato_Brasileiro_de_Futebol#Melhores_m%C3%A9dias_anuais_de_clubes