SYDNEY, Australia — A good soccer team is pretty easy to define. It’s a group of players with good skills, tactics and luck on their side. When trying to define the Brazilian soccer team, however, I am afraid the words good or bad are too weak. When one limits soccer merely to the rules set on field, sure, a team can be judged as good or bad. But what are we judging these players by? By how many accurate passes they make? By how many goals they score?

What the Brazil 2014 World Cup has taught me is that soccer is not just about the rules, or passes or goals. It is actually about much more than that. First, imagine a classroom of 11 students with talents such as dancing and singing. In this classroom, every student must only learn math. They have to be good in math, have to take exams and be graded and ranked solely on these exam marks.

In this scenario, the classroom is the Brazilian soccer team. The school? FIFA. What the World Cup has taught me is that soccer players are not any different from us students. They are trapped in the rules of the game just as we are in the norms of our educational systems.

Over the years, developed countries have revised their educational systems to emphasize critical thinking over plain memorization. These students now excel in theater, the arts and the humanities just as they have excelled in math and science. And I applaud them for that. However, couldn’t they have implemented this reform to soccer as well? This is where some teams lag behind and others score. European teams have focused too much on the idea of winning, too much on their mathematics and sciences: their tactics, angles and force to improve their soccer skills. However, European teams seem to have forgotten the only artistic, human and visually appealing part of the sport: the inventive, improvised and graceful moves that Brazil has mastered.

Brazil's mixed culture, comprised of European, African and indigenous elements, allowed Brazil to create a poetic kind of soccer in contrast to the linear “prose soccer” performed in Europe. In the words of José Wisnik, “Straight and angular European soccer became sinuous and curving as it took on the body movements of samba dancers and the martial art dancers and fighters of Brazilian capoeira.”

As the 2014 World Cup showed, this style of soccer may not lead to victory, but it does make an impression, and it is here to stay.

I am proud that Brazil has shown the world that here, soccer is a way of life and that there is more to soccer than the mere math of scoring or the science of reflex and blocking a ball. Inside the classrooms, unfortunately, the country follows an outdated educational system where a student’s success is determined solely by exam marks. Inside the stadiums, Brazil has definitely evolved to appreciate soccer as an art, rather than a sport. Brazil has learnt that the marks, or goals, do not really matter. What actually matters is putting on a good show: how to dance after scoring a goal, how to sing a national anthem in the greatest a cappella the world has ever seen, how to dribble a ball in style while making an entire stadium roar and finally, how to be unpredictable. After all, life is not mathematical, but unpredictable, just as the 7-1 and 3-0 were. And that is what makes it exciting.

Teachers: do not judge a student solely on his or her ability to score on a test. World: Do not judge a player, a team or a nation only on its ability to score goals. Brazil has other reasons to be proud. As the world’s seventh-largest economy and a model of democracy, the country has achieved incredible social progress, lifting people out of poverty and reducing income gaps steadily in this century. In four years, we have employed millions of people and improved our national infrastructure. In four weeks, we have shown the planet what the country is about: warmth, diversity, happiness and a contagious energy, both inside and outside of the stadiums. We have shown the world how to cheer and dance the Brazilian way.

Let’s be happy for Brazil. And let’s not let the art in futebol die.