“Mongrel complex" (Complexo de Vira-Lata in Portuguese) is an expression created by the Brazilian novelist and writer Nelson Rodrigues, in which originally he referred to the trauma suffered by Brazilians in 1950, when the National Soccer team was defeated by the Uruguayan national team in the final match of the Soccer World Cup in Maracanã. Brazil would just recover in 1958, when it won the World Cup for the first time.
For Rodrigues, the phenomenon was not exclusive related to soccer. According to him:
The expression "mongrel complex" was rediscovered in 2004 by the American journalist Larry Rohter, in an article for The New York Times about the Brazilian nuclear program, he wrote:
References
Mongrel complex Wikipedia(Text) CC BY-SA