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Soccer & Society Publication details, including instructions for authors and subscription information: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/fsas20 Soccer in : an introduction Martin Curia a Graduate Program in Anthropology, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Brazil Published online: 18 Nov 2013.

To cite this article: Martin Curi (2014) Soccer in Brazil: an introduction, Soccer & Society, 15:1, 2-7, DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2013.854523 To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2013.854523

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Soccer in Brazil: an introduction

Martin Curi*

Graduate Program in Anthropology, Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niterói, Brazil

One of the first ideas that come to the mind of most non-Brazilians when talking about Brazil is soccer. The country is home to some of the best-known players in the sport, such as Pelé, Garrincha and Romario. Brazil also has the greatest amount of players playing abroad, in European teams, and is also the only country in the world to have won the World Cup five times. As such, it is no surprise that soccer is such an important part of Brazilian life; one may find soccer stadiums and fields almost everywhere in the country and overhear soccer-talk in any daily conversation, not to mention the tons of space this sport is given in the media. Despite all the commotion it causes, though, there has hardly been any system- atic research on soccer in Brazilian Social Science until the 1980s. By the 1990s, Brazilian researchers were actually complaining about this lack of research. This changed in the year 2000 when a new generation of ‘soccer anthropologists’ and ‘soccer sociologists’ finally started taking advantage of all the raw data surrounding them. Nowadays, I believe that we may speak of a boom in soccer research, which means establishing a specialized field of knowledge and not merely doing surveys limited to ‘What does soccer mean to Brazil?’ Researchers are now asking specific questions about the media, how athletes are trained, fan behaviour and club organization. The present volume intends to illustrate the interests and ideas of this new generation of researchers. The first symptoms of soccer being considered from a sociological perspective, however, actually go back to 1945, when the leading Brazilian social scientist, Gilberto Freyre,1 dedicated a note from his book, Sociologia, to considerations on

Downloaded by [109.162.208.108] at 06:06 30 June 2014 the 1938 Brazilian World Cup team. Basically, in about four pages, he used the team’s victory to back his already well-known hypothesis that ethnic plurality is an advantage for the country: after all, the team was racially mixed. Freyre’s opinion thus confronted racist theories which had made up the mainstream of Brazilian social science until that time. Two years later, in , Freyre’s friend, Mario Filho, published one of the most important books on Brazilian soccer, O negro no futebol brasileiro (Blacks in Brazilian Soccer).2 Filho wanted to confirm Freyre’s hypothesis by claiming that Brazil owes the quality of its soccer to the participation of black players, naturally endowed with a greater genetic disposition for a more artistic playing style. Racial theories apart, the book, was also the first systematic documentation of soccer’s ori- gins in Brazil and has since become a basic source for much of the research done on soccer in the country. In recent years, however, some scientists have questioned the

*Email: [email protected]

© 2013 Taylor & Francis Soccer & Society 3

real value of Filho’s work. Most of the criticism targetted the author himself, who was a journalist and not a scholar, which would incline him to spend more time defending commercial interests by promoting the sport than considering it from an academic standpoint (a point that really should be considered when using his book). Filho’s counterpart in São Paulo was the journalist Thomás Mazzoni, who in 1950 published his História do Futebol Brasileiro (History of Brazilian Soccer).3 In the next few decades, there was apparently little interest paid to Brazilian soc- cer within the country itself; most of the publications worth consideration were writ- ten by non-Brazilians, such as the German work Der Fußball in Brasilien by Anatol Rosenfeld4 and the book Soccer: Opium of the Brazilian People, written by the American researcher Janet Lever.5 Neither of these publications was destined to reach the Brazilian public, but rather to non-Brazilian readers who wished to know more about the general characteristics of the Brazilian soccer scenario. Brazilian researchers came back to the forefront in 1977 when Simoni Lahud Guedes did her MA dissertation on ‘O Futebol Brasileiro: Instituição Zero’ (Brazilian Soccer: The Zero Institution), a pioneering study that analysed Brazilian soccer from an anthropological point of view.6 The same year, the sociologist Sergio Miceli, who was then working as a journalist, published his article ‘Corinthians. E o pão?’ (Corinthians. And the bread?), an in-depth analysis of fan behaviour published in a weekly news magazine.7 In 1980, Ricardo Benzaquen da Araújo produced another MA dissertation, ‘Os Gênios da Pelota – Um Estudo do Futebol como Profissão’ (Geniuses of the Soccer Ball – A Study of Soccer as a Profession).8 Roberto DaMatta’s (1982) Universo do Futebol: Esporte e Sociedade Brasileira (The Soccer Universe: Sports and Society in Brazil)9 is often seen as a watershed that would later stimulate a number of researchers to invest in soccer studies. In this anthology, DaMatta and his colleagues discuss the meaning of soccer in Brazilian society. They created the key question for the Brazilian sports sociologist: ‘Why is there so much soccer in Brazil?’ The fact, though, that a now internationally known anthropologist recognizes soccer as a worthy object of study, was already enough in itself to encourage others to follow suit. The next milestone in soccer research was the founding of the ‘Nucleus for Soc- cer Sociology’, a research group that started holding meetings in 1990 at the State University of Rio de Janeiro (UERJ), led by Mauricio Murad, who in 1996 pub- lished his book Dos Pés à Cabeça: Elementos Básicos de Sociologia do Futebol Downloaded by [109.162.208.108] at 06:06 30 June 2014 (From Head to Feet: Basic Elements for a Sociology of Soccer).10 Murad started lec- turing on the social implications and meanings of soccer in 1994. He was also responsible for the first Brazilian academic journal on Soccer, Pesquisa de Campo (Fieldwork), which he published from 1994 to 1997. The journal offered, in the six issues published during its existence, a research base for those scholars who were then the most important names in soccer studies: Ronaldo Helal, Antonio Jorge Soares and Luiz Henrique Toledo.11 Possibly as a consequence of the first issue of Fieldwork in 1994, the University of São Paulo’s (USP) Social Science digest also published a special issue on soccer, taking soccer studies to other Brazilian academic centres, such as São Paulo. In this city, Waldenyr Caldas’ work is especially worth mentioning, since in 1990 he had already published a detailed and critical study on soccer’s origins in Brazil, O Pontapé Inicial: Memória do Futebol Brasileiro (The Kick-Off: Reminiscing on Brazilian Soccer).12 Another participant in this special São Paulo issue was José Sergio Leite Lopes, who despite never having actually published a book on soccer, 4 M. Curi

deserves to be mentioned because of his important research on amateur soccer, the legendary Brazilian player, Garrincha, the Maracanã stadium and the 1998 World Cup in France.13 His work has since inspired many of those researchers who now contribute to this present volume of Soccer & Society. All of these initiatives laid the foundations for further studies on soccer, which started multiplying in Brazil, becoming part of a regular discussion list in all of the important Social Science (meaning Anthropology, Sociology and History) con- gresses in the country. Research on soccer has since expanded to the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, home to such recognized researchers as Arlei Damo,14 Édison Gastaldo,15 and Gilmar Mascarenhas.16 They published a special sports issue in the nationally recognized anthropological digest, Horizontes Antropológicos (Anthropological Horizons) in 2008.17 This special issue also indicates a new tendency that widens the spectrum of sports studies in Brazil, since this was the first academic sports publication not dedi- cated exclusively to soccer, but to sports in general. Even so, soccer is by far the most important , so much so that some scholars speak of a soccer monoculture, which has also led to an academic sports monoculture. Recently, how- ever, Brazilian researchers have started dedicating more attention to other sports, probably because Rio de Janeiro hosted the Pan-American Games in 2007 and will now host the Olympics in 2016 (an effort that has been in progress since 2004). Now Brazil is part of the international sports arena, which has provoked greater pub- lic interest in sports in general, including governmental financing for research. As a reflection of this tendency, in 2004 the Nucleus for Studies and Research on Sports and Society was founded at the Federal Fluminense University (UFF) in Niterói, Rio de Janeiro State. Some of this group’s regular members, such as Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda, Antonio Holzmeister, Leda Maria da Costa, Luiz Fernando Rojos, Marcos Alvito and Martin Curi edit the online magazine Esporte e Sociedade (Sports and Society) since 2005.18 In 2007, another research group was founded in Rio, namely Sports, which is coordinated by Victor Andrade de Melo19 at the Fed- eral University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). He publishes their online journal, Recorde, dedicated to the history of sports.20 Scholarly work on soccer has continued multiplying in Brazil and it would now be impossible to mention all of the many recent developments here. A complete catalogue of this production can be found in the work of Silva,21 from the Federal Downloaded by [109.162.208.108] at 06:06 30 June 2014 University of Minas Gerais state, located in its capital city, Belo Horizonte. My intention here is to draw attention to some of the milestones of soccer studies in Bra- zil, to which the essays in this volume desires to make a contribution. It was not an easy task to choose from amongst the many interesting themes. Hence, I have tried to compile those works which I believe may best describe the key historical data and mainstream tendencies in Brazilian soccer research for the non-Brazilian reader. The first few essays are dedicated to the history and origins of soccer in the country. Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda opens the discussion with a historical narra- tive on the development of spectator sports in Rio de Janeiro, describing how soccer was introduced in this city. Afterwards, I present biographical data about Brazil’s first great soccer star, Arthur Friedenreich, who participated in the inauguration of this sport in São Paulo. The biography calls into question the first measures taken to institutionalize soccer in Brazil because of the resulting racial discrimination, a prob- lem that will also be analysed in other essays in this series. Gilmar Mascarenhas describes soccer’s introduction in the southernmost state of Rio Grande do Sul, in a Soccer & Society 5

process that was completely distinct from the rest of the country and little known even amongst Brazilians. Ana Paula da Silva discusses the first Brazilian World Cup trophy, awarded in 1958, and the national team’s key player, Pelé. Racial discourse is also at the centre of her analysis, throwing new light on this internationally recognized athlete’s career. In the second part of the volume, current problems in Brazilian soccer have been discussed. Luiz Henrique de Toledo describes the standardization of Brazilian soc- cer, not only by looking at the rules, but at the unique training styles that turned Brazilian players into ‘professionals’ and how these styles are represented by media ‘specialists’. In sequence, Antonio Holzmeister reviews Brazilian stadium construc- tion from back in the days of meadow lawn soccer up to the new Engenhão Olym- pic stadium, demonstrating the force of international obligations from which Brazil is in no way exempt. While all the other essays talk about soccer as a masculine sport, Leda Maria da Costa offers precious information on women’s soccer and its development through- out the history of modern Brazil. She shows the contradiction between a lack of institutional support and the surprising success enjoyed by female players on the field. There are finally contributions on soccer ‘professionals’, as these are under- stood by Toledo. Arlei Sander Damo presents the results of his comparative eth- nography on how athletes are trained in Brazil and in France. Afterwards, Marcelo Weishaupt Proni and Felipe Henrique Zaia discuss the ‘professionals’ in charge of administrating soccer clubs. Both the essays demonstrate just how recently both clubs and their players have become professionals, thanks to new legislation, which standardized Brazilian soccer, even though the roots of this legislation go back to 1933. They draw attention not only to the legislation, but also to the individual acts that are mostly shown as external developments having serious consequences in the country. Media ‘specialists’ are the theme of Édison Gastaldo, Ronaldo Helal and Antonio Jorge Soares. The first analyses the media representations of the 1998 World Cup on Brazilian television and in propaganda. The second discusses the newspaper reports during the 2002 World Cup, demonstrating how the so-called ‘soccer country’ came under pressure in a globalized world, not only economic pres- sure, but also pressure to pluralize access to information. Finally, the pioneer scholar Downloaded by [109.162.208.108] at 06:06 30 June 2014 on soccer studies, Simoni Lahud Guedes, discusses soccer as an agent of national identity. She opens her analyses by looking into the alterity between Brazil and its neighbour, , thus permitting a Pan-American point of view. There can be no doubt that internationalization and globalization have turned out to be a big question for Brazilian researchers when analysing local soccer practices, since soccer continues to be the main medium for both the country and its citizens to define themselves as well as to enter into international com- parisons. The volume ends with a critique on the documentary film O Dia em que o Brasil Esteve Aqui (The day Brazil came here). It shows how Brazil tried to use soccer as a political instrument, reinforcing the importance of this sport as part of an identification with the country as a nation and the strength of the stereotypes connected to it. Furthermore, it is an example of how the arts have treated soccer in Brazil, which is not only present in cinema, but also in literature, fine arts and song lyrics. 6 M. Curi

Notes 1. Freyre, Sociologia. 2. Filho, O negro no Foot-Ball do Brasil. 3. Mazzoni, História do Futebol no Brasil (1894–1950). 4. Rosenfeld, Das Fußballspiel in Brasilien. 5. Lever, Soccer. 6. Guedes, ‘O Futebol Brasileiro: Instituição Zero’. 7. Miceli, ‘Corinthians. E o pão?’ 8. Araújo, ‘Os Gênios da Pelota’. 9. DaMatta et al. Universo do Futebol. 10. Murad, Dos Pés à Cabeça. 11. Helal et al. A Invenção do País do Futebol; Toledo, Torcidas Organizadas de Futebol. 12. Caldas, O Pontapé Inicial. 13. Leite Lopes, ‘Considerações em torno das transformações do profissionalismo no futebol a partir da observação da Copa de 1998’; ‘A morte da alegria do povo’; ‘A vitória do futebol que incorporou a pelada, ‘Le Maracanã, coeur du Brésil’. 14. Damo, Futebol e identidade social. 15. Gastaldo and Guedes, Nações em campo. 16. Mascarenhas, ‘A bola nas redes e o enredo do lugar’. 17. ‘Horizontes Antropológicos’, Antropologia e Esporte, Nr 30, 2008. http://www. scielo.br/scielo.php?script=sci_issuetoc&pid=0104-718320080002&lng=en&nrm=iso. ISSN 0104-7183 (print), ISSN 1806-9983 (online). 18. ‘Esporte e Sociedade’–Revista Digital: www.esportesociedade.com. Nr. 1, 2005. ISSN 1809-1296. 19. Melo, Cidade Sportiva. 20. ‘Recorde’–Revista de História do Esporte: http://www.sport.ifcs.ufrj.br/recorde/ home.asp. Nr. 1, 2008. ISSN 1982-8985. 21. Silva, Levantamento da produção sobre o futebol nas ciências humanas e sociais de 1980 a 2007.

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Leite Lopes, José Sergio. ‘A morte da alegria do povo’ [The Death of the Peoples Joy]. Revi- sta Brasileira de Ciências Sociais 20 (1992). Leite Lopes, José Sergio. ‘A vitória do futebol que incorporou a pelada’ [The Victory of Football which Internalized the Street Kicks]. Revista USP 22 (1994). Leite Lopes, José Sergio. ‘Le Maracanã, coeur du Brésil’ [Maracanã Heart of Brazil]. Soci- étés et représentations 7 (1998). Leite Lopes, José Sergio. ‘Considerações em torno das transformações do profissionalismo no futebol a partir da observação da Copa de 1998’ [Considerations About the Transfor- mations of Profisionalism of Football Based on Observations at the World Cup 1998]. Es- tudos Históricos 23 (1999). Lever, Janet. Soccer: Opium of the Brazilian People. New Jersey, NJ: Transaction, 1969. Mascarenhas, Gilmar. ‘A bola nas redes e o enredo do lugar: uma geografia do futebol e de seu advento no Rio Grande do Sul’ [The Ball in the Net and the Action of a Place: A Geography of Football and its Beginnings in Rio Grande do Sul]. PhD diss., Universid- ade de São Paulo, 2001. Mazzoni, Thomas. História do Futebol no Brasil (1894–1950) [History of (1894–1950)]. São Paulo: Leia, 1950. Melo, Victor Andrade de. Cidade Sportiva: Primórdios do Esporte no Rio de Janeiro [Sport City: Beginnings of sport in Rio de Janeiro]. Rio de Janeiro: Relume Dumara, 2001. Miceli, Sergio. ‘Corinthians. E o pão?’ [Corinthians. And the Bread?]. Isto É 42 (1977). Murad, Mauricio. Dos Pés à Cabeça: Elementos Básicos de Sociologia do Futebol [From the Feet to the Head: Basic Elements on Football Sociology]. Rio de Janeiro: Irradiação Cul- tural, 1996. Rosenfeld, Anatol. Das Fußballspiel in Brasilien [The Football Game in Brazil]. São Paulo: Hans Staden Jahrbuch, 1956. Silva, Silvio Ricardo. Levantamento da produção sobre o futebol nas ciências humanas e sociais de 1980 a 2007 [Investigation on the Production about Football in Human and Social Science Between 1980 and 2007]. Belo Horizonte: UFMG, 2009. Toledo, Luiz Henrique de. Torcidas Organizadas de Futebol [Football Supporters Clubs]. Campinas: Autores Associados, 1996. Downloaded by [109.162.208.108] at 06:06 30 June 2014