On the final day of the 2013 season Vasco da Gama played Atlético Paranaense. Atlético’s stadium in Curitiba was being rebuilt for the World Cup and, with the work hopelessly behind schedule, it was unavailable for the game. Instead it was played in Joinville, in Santa Catarina state. Vasco’s torcidas had been among the most violent in 2013, invading their players’ dressing rooms after defeats and conducting pitch invasions. Given that Vasco needed to win in order to avoid relegation, and given that their threadbare squad made a win the most unlikely outcome, the authorities decided not to have any police in the stadium, nor did they effectively segregate the crowd. When Vasco went 1–0 down, the inevitable fight broke out in the stands as Vasco torcidas charged their opponents. Live on TV, the nation was treated to Atlético and Vasco supporters brawling and trampling on their opponents. The police eventually arrived and restored some kind of order after firing tear gas. Vasco went on to lose the restarted game 5–1, but had the temerity to appeal the result, claiming that the long delay had adversely affected them. It is hard to know what the worst element of this dismal story is: the engrained and systemic violence of the torcidas; the complete failure of any level of Brazilian football administration to properly acknowledge let alone tackle the problem; the contemptible behaviour of Vasco’s board; the pathetic punishments meted out to the clubs; the platitudes that emerge from the mouths of politicians who have presided over all of this, but who have barely mentioned the torrent of disorder and violence inside or outside the stadiums. The iron fist appears to be the first and only policy option.
Just a few weeks later, the government announced that the prospect of protests at the World Cup would be met with a budget for security of over $1 billion and the formation of a national police force 10,000 strong, deployable anywhere in the country. Reassuringly the government said they would be trained to the same standards as UN peacekeepers. Perhaps they will be taking courses with the Brazilian forces who served in this capacity in Haiti, and who treated the exercise as a cross between a military occupation and a favela pacification programme, and who were repeatedly accused of summary executions and human rights abuses. Perhaps they will be needed to quell the gun battles and protests that have been emerging in Rio’s ‘pacified’ favelas, where the rule of the traficantes has yet to be replaced by the rule of law. Perhaps they will take their lead from the São Paulo police who, at an anti-World Cup demonstration, just 2,000-strong, in early February, kept order by shooting one protestor dead. This death barely made a ripple in Brazil, let alone the rest of the world. Come 12 June 2014 we shall see.
Brazil might still be, as Milton Nascimento had sung, ‘the country of football’, but when the Seleção plays, Brazil is no longer just at the stadium and its streets are no longer empty. There might still be victories to be won on the field, but it is hard to imagine that they could unite the futebol nation the way they have done in the past, for they have been bought at the cost of making Brazil’s divisions and its injustices starker than ever. In the long run, we can hope that this is its triumph rather than its tragedy.
Notes
Introduction: The Curious Rise of the Futebol Nation
1This line of thinking was inspired by P. Anderson (1994), ‘The Dark Side of Brazilian Conviviality’, London Review of Books 16(22), 24 November. I have also been guided throughout in my understanding of the politics of Brazil by P. Anderson (2002), ‘The Cardoso Legacy: Lula’s Inheritance’, London Review of Books 24(24), 12 December; P. Anderson (2011), ‘Lula’s Brazil’, London Review of Books 33(7), 31 March; T. Skidmore (1967), Politics in Brazil, Oxford: Oxford University Press; T. Skidmore (1988), Politics of Military Rule in Brazil, Oxford: Oxford University Press; T. Skidmore (2010), Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
2The phrase was popularly credited to Pelé after he published his memoirs with the title My Life and the Beautiful Game in 1977. Others with a prior claim include H. E. Bates, Didi and Stuart Hall.
3H. McIlvanney (1994), McIlvanney on Football, Edinburgh: Mainstream, p. 168.
4J. M. Wisnik (2008), Veneno Remédio: O Futebol e o Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Companhia das Letras.
5R. DaMatta (1986), Explorações: Ensaios de Sociologia Interpretativa, Rio de Janeiro: Rocca, p. 130, cited in T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso.
1. Champagne Football: The Game of the Belle Époque, 1889–1922
1M. de Andrade (1984), Macunaíma, New York: Random House.
2Quoted in Paulo Mendes Campos (1981), ‘Passes de letra’, in Diário da Tarde, Rio de Janeiro: Civilização Brasileira, p. 92.
3See José Moraes dos Santos Neto (2007), Visão do Jogo – Primórdios do Futebol no Brasil, São Paulo: Cosac Naify.
4This section draws extensively on V. de Melo and J. Mangan (1997), ‘A web of the wealthy: modern sport in the nineteenth-century culture of Rio de Janeiro’, International Journal of the History of Sport 14(1), 168–73.
5Cited in ibid., p. 170.
6Quoted in A. Hamilton (1998), An Entirely Different Game: The British Influence on Brazilian Football, Edinburgh: Mainstream.
7Ibid., p. 44.
8Quoted in ibid., p. 40.
9Letter from Charles Miller to Bannister Court School Magazine III(31), March 1904, repr. in Hamilton (1998), p. 42.
10See T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso, p. 12.
11Quoted in T. Mazzoni (1950), História do Futebol no Brasil 1894–1950, Rio de Janeiro: Edições Leia, p. 69 and Mason (1995), p. 12.
12Quoted in B. Buarque, J. Malaia, L. Henrique, V. Andrade (2012), A Torcida Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras.
13Quoted in Mason (1995), p. 14.
14João do Rio (pseudonym of João Paulo Coelho Barreto), ‘Pall Mall Rio – Foot-ball’, O Paiz, 4 September 1916.
15Buarque et al. (2012).
16A. Torelly, ‘Match de foot-ball’, in M. Pedrosa (ed.) (1967), Gol de Letra: O Futebol na Literatura Brasileira, Rio de Janeiro: Gol, p. 112.
17Quoted in A. Bellos (2002), Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, London: Bloomsbury, p. 31.
18L. Barreto (1922), ‘O nosso esporte’, A.B.C., 26 August 1922.
19Quoted in G. Bocketti (2008), ‘Italian immigrants, Brazilian football, and the dilemmas of national identity’, Journal of Latin American Studies 40 (2), 275–302.
20Quoted in L. Pereira (1998), ‘O jogo dos sentidos: os literatos e a popularização do futebol no Rio de Janeiro’, in S. Chaloub and L. Pereira (eds.), A História Contada: Capítulos de História Social da Literatura no Brasil, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira, p. 201.
21Afrânio Peixoto (1916), ‘Para vencer no futebol’, Jornal do Commércio, 25 October 1916.
22Ibid.
23Carlos Sussekind de Mendonça quoted in L. Pereira (2000), Footballmania: Uma História Social do Futebol no Rio de Janeiro, 1902–1938, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Nova Fronteira.
24L. Barreto (1919), ‘Liga contra o futebol’, Rio Jornal, 12 March.
25G. Ramos under the pseudonym J. Calisto (1921), ‘Índio’, Palmeira dos Índios.
26On Friedenreich see M. Curi (2013), ‘Arthur Friedenreich (1892–1969): a Brazilian Biography’, Soccer and Society, 18 November.
27L. Barreto (1921), ‘Bendito football’, Careta, 1 October.
2. Modern Times? Football and the Death of the Old Republic, 1922–1932
Epigraph. Extract from Antônio de Alcântara Machado (1927), ‘Corinthians (2) vs. Palestra (1)’, in Brás, Bexiga e Barra Funda, Rio de Janeiro: Imago, pp. 36–41.
1Quoted in K. Jackson (2012), Constellation of Genius, 1922: Modernism Year One, New York: Farrar, Straus and Giroux.
2Mário de Andrade (2008), ‘Brasil – Argentina’, in Os Filhos da Candinha, Rio de Janeiro: Agir, pp. 65–8; Mário de Andrade (1922), De Paulicéia Desvairada a Café (Poesias Completas), São Paulo: Círculo do Livro; Mário de Andrade (2001), Macunaíma, o Herói sem Nen
hum Caráter, Belo Horizonte/Rio de Janeiro: Garnier.
3Oswald de Andrade, Memórias Sentimentais de João Miramar, São Paulo: Globo, 1991.
4Machado (1997), ‘Corinthians (2) vs. Palestra (1)’.
5New York Times, 28 January 1917, quoted in C. Gaffney (2010), ‘Mega-Events and Socio-Spatial Dynamics in Rio de Janeiro, 1919–2016’, Journal of Latin American Geography 9(1), 7–29.
6The football fragments of Terra Encantada can be seen at http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5cYyVmLhiWs.
7J. Manuel, C. Malaia Santos, V. Melo (eds.) (2012), 1922: Celebrações Esportivas do Centenário, Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras.
8Ibid.
9T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso, p. 56. Fausto compared himself to an orange which would be squeezed and pulped by football’s bosses.
10W. Caldas (1990), O Pontapé Inicial: Memória do Futebol Brasileiro, p. 88.
11Amílcar quoted in ibid., p. 62.
12Folha da Manhã, 10 July 1931, quoted in G. Bocketti (2008), ‘Italian immigrants, Brazilian football, and the dilemmas of national identity’, Journal of Latin American Studies 40(2).
3. Brasilidade: Football and the New Order, 1932–1950
Epigraph. José Lins do Rego quoted in E. Coutinho (1991), Zelins – Flamengo Até Morrer, Rio de Janeiro: Ed. Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do RJ.
1Quoted in M. Maia (2002), Villa-Lobos, Alma Brasileira, São Paulo: Ed. Contraponto, pp. 48–9.
2‘Inaugurado o Estádio Municipal do Pacaembu’, O Estado de São Paulo, 28 April 1940, p. 8.
3Ibid.
4Jornal dos Sports, 13 March 1937, quoted in Renato Soares Coutinho (2009), Pelo Brasil e pelo Flamengo: José Bastos Padilha e o Projeto de Construção de uma Nação, paper given at International History Congress, Maringá, Paraná, September 2009: see http://www.pph.uem.br/cih/anais/trabalhos/273.pdf.
5Jornal dos Sports, 19 February 1937, quoted in ibid.
6See R. Levine (1984), ‘Elite interventions in urban popular culture in modern Brazil’, Luso-Brazilian Review 21(2).
7See L. Shaw (1998), ‘São coisas nossas: samba and identity in the Vargas era (1930–1945)’, Portuguese Studies 14, 152–69; L. Shaw (2002), ‘Samba and “Brasilidade”: notions of national identity in the lyrics of Noel Rosa (1910–1937)’, Lusotopie 2, 81–96.
8Lamartine Babo actually composed hymns (supposedly in less than a week) for eleven of Rio’s teams, all of which were released as records, testament to the depth of football support in the city. See http://globoesporte.globo.com/futebol/noticia/2012/02/lamartine-babo-o-compositor-dos-hinos-dos-clubesdo-rio-de-janeiro.html.
9Correio da Manhã, 15 June 1938.
10G. Freyre (1964), The Masters and the Slaves: A Study in the Development of Brazilian Civilization, New York: Random House.
11P. Robb (2004), A Death in Brazil, London: Bloomsbury, pp. 24–5.
12Mário de Andrade (2008), ‘Brasil – Argentina’ in Os Filhos da Candinha, Rio de Janeiro: Agir, quoted in B. Buarque de Hollanda (2011), ‘In praise of improvisation in Brazilian soccer: Modernism, popular music, and a Brasilidade of sports’, Critical Studies in Improvisation/Études critiques en improvisation 7(1).
13Domingos da Guia, vídeo Núcleo / UERJ, 1995, cited in M. Murad (2007), A Violência e o Futebol: Dos Estudos Clássicos aos Dias de Hoje, Rio de Janeiro: Editora FGV.
14Quoted in R. Levine (1980), ‘Sport and society: the case of Brazilian futebol’, Luso-Brazilian Review 17(2).
15Jornal dos Sports, 10 June 1947.
16Quoted in A. Bellos (2002), Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, London: Bloomsbury, p. 48.
17Ibid.
18Quoted in T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso, p. 89.
19N. Rodrigues (1994), ‘O drama das sete copas’ [June 1966], in A Pátria em Chuteiras: Novas Crônicas de Futebol, São Paulo: Companhia das Letras, pp. 112–19.
4. Brasília and the Ball: Inventing the Beautiful Game, 1950–1964
Epigraph. O. Niemeyer (2000), The Curves of Time: The Memoirs of Oscar Niemeyer, London: Phaidon Press, p. 62.
1Quoted in Geoffrey Green, The Times, 30 June 1958.
2J. Leite Lopes (2000), ‘The People’s Joy vanishes: considerations on the death of a soccer player’, Journal of Latin American Anthropology 4(2).
3Cited in The Pelé Albums (1990), vols. 1 and 2, Sydney: Weldon Publishing.
4J. Lever (1995), Soccer Madness: Brazil’s Passion for the World’s Most Popular Sport, 2nd edn, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press.
5Ibid., p. 74.
6Ibid., p. 72.
7J. de Ryswick (1962), 100,000 Heures de Football, Paris: La Table Ronde, pp. 224–5.
8Cited in T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso, p. 123.
9Rodrigues quoted in A. Bellos (2002), Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, London: Bloomsbury, p. 249.
10The whole of João de Cabral Melo Neto’s letter can be seen at http://www.literaturanaarquibancada.com/2011/11/joaocabral-de-melo-neto-e-o-futebol.html.
11Carlos Drummond de Andrade (2002), Quando é Dia de Futebol, Rio de Janeiro: Editora Record.
5. Playing the Hard Line: Football under the Dictatorship, 1964–1986
Epigraphs. Jornal do Brasil and Telê Santana quoted in T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso.
1As reported in Jornal do Brasil, 22 June 1970, translated by and cited in Lever (1995), Soccer Madness: Brazil’s Passion for the World’s Most Popular Sport, 2nd edn, Prospect Heights, IL: Waveland Press, p. 69.
2Jornal do Brasil, 19 June 1973, translated by and cited in Lever (1995), p. 64.
3The conversation between the two may be apocryphal, reported by someone in their presence over twenty years later and widely reported in the Brazilian press; see for example http://www.jornaldapaulista.com.br/site/page.php?key=3985.
4B. Milan (1989), Brasil: O País do Futebol, Rio de Janeiro: Best Editora, p. 12.
5Cited in R. Levine (1980), ‘Sport and society: the case of Brazilian futebol’, Luso-Brazilian Review 17(2).
6E. Coutinho (1994), Bye-Bye, Soccer, trans. Wilson Louria, Austin, TX: Host Publications, p. 6.
7Walter Areno, ‘Os desportos femininos: aspectos médicos (Female sports: medical aspects)’, Physical Education 62, 63, 1942, p. 57, cited in G. Knijknik (2011), ‘From the cradle to Athens: the silver-coated story of a warrior in Brazilian soccer’, Sporting Traditions 28(1), 63–83.
8B. Milan (1989), Brasil: O País do Futebol, Rio de Janeiro: Best Editora.
9Quoted in S. Votre and L. Mourão (2003), ‘Women’s football in Brazil: progress and problems’, Soccer and Society 4(2–3), 254–67.
10Cited in E. Couto (2010), ‘A esquerda contra-ataca: rebeldia e contestação política no futebol Brasileiro (1970–1978)’, Revista de História do Esporte 3(1).
11See T. Skidmore (2010), Brazil: Five Centuries of Change, 2nd edn, Oxford: Oxford University Press, pp. 188–91.
12T. Caesar (1988), ‘Bringing it all down: the 1986 World Cup in Brazil’, Massachusetts Review 29(2), Summer, 77–86.
6. Magic and Dreams are Dead: Pragmatism, Politics and Football, 1986–2002
Epigraph. Carlos Alberto Parreira quoted in the New York Times, 1 July 1994.
1New York Times, 1 July 1994.
2Gazeta Sportiva, 27 August 1992.
3Quoted in J. Brooke (1994), ‘Rio Journal; Brazilians say their World Cup runneth over’, New York Times, 19 July.
4T. Caesar (1988), ‘Bringing it all down: the 1986 World Cup in Brazil’, Massachusetts Review 29(2), Summer, 78.
5Quoted in T. Mason (1995), Passion of the People: Football in South America, London: Verso, p. 145.
6Quoted in ibid., p. 150.
7Quoted in H. Tobar (2002), ‘Brazil gets “Biggest Happiness” ’, Los Angeles Times, 1 July.
8Quoted in A. Bellos (2001), ‘Crime, anarchy, incom
petence: how the blazers betrayed Brazil’, Guardian, 6 December.
9Quoted in D. Pinheiro (2011), ‘The President’, Piauí 58.
10Guardian, 6 January 1994, cited in Mason (1995), p. 145.
11Quoted in Bellos (2002), Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life, London: Bloomsbury, p. 302.
12Ibid., p. 303.
7. Futebol Nation Redux: The Game in Lula’s Brazil, 2002–2013
Epigraph. Lula quoted in Terra.com report, 29 July 2010: ‘Deus sabe que o Brasil não pode perder a Copa de 2014, diz Lula’, see http://esportes.terra.com.br/futebol/brasil2014/noticias/0,,OI4594075-EI10545,00-Deus+sabe+que+o+Brasil+nao+pode+perder+a+Copa+de+diz+Lula.html.
1Lance!, 19 August 2010, see http://www.lancenet.com.br/infograficos/organizacao-da-copa-2014/.
2Júlio Mariz quoted in A. Downie (2008), ‘Trading in soccer talent’, New York Times, 19 July.
3Quoted in Leonardo Sakamoto, ‘Após morte de jovem, MPT quer processar Vasco por trabalho infantil’, 25 February 2012, see http://blogdosakamoto.blogosfera.uol.com.br/2012/02/25/apos-morte-de-jovem-mpt-quer-processar-vasco-por-trabalho-infantil/.
4Quoted in M. Proni and F. Zaia (2013), ‘Financial condition of Brazilian soccer clubs: an overview’, Soccer and Society, 12 November. All the above financial data on Brazilian football clubs is drawn from this article.
5See the notes to the Mundo Livre S/A CD Por Pouco, 2000.
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