Football
Breton sport puts the homeland in boots
Thesis published in a book reveals how the
football became a factor of national integration
Manuel Alves Filho
Less than 15 days before the Brazilian team's debut in the World Cup, against Turkey, anxiety is beginning to take over the fans. The most popular sport in the country, football will certainly put millions of people in front of the televisions throughout the most important competition in the sport, even though most of the matches take place in the early hours of the morning and the team led by coach Luiz Felipe Scolari has not yet reached the standard quality expected from a national team. But what were the factors that made a game created in distant England become so popular in Brazil? The answers to this question can be found in the doctoral thesis defended, in 1998, by historian Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira, in the History Department of the Institute of Philosophy and Human Sciences at Unicamp. The work, titled Footballmania. A social history of football in Rio de Janeiro (1902-1938), turned into a book (Editora Nova Fronteira) and won, in 2001, the Jabuti Prize in the Human Sciences category.
According to Pereira, it only took 36 years for football to stop being considered a strange game – where have you ever seen a match end in a draw?! – to become one of Brazilians’ greatest passions. The speed of the process, according to him, is due to the construction of a national identity around sport. During four years of research, using police documentation, reports, correspondence and newspapers from the National Archives and the National Library of Rio de Janeiro as sources, the historian discovered that traditional clubs such as Flamengo and Fluminense were not the only ones promoting the sport . "I identified dozens of small associations, mostly formed by workers, that were absent from the story normally told about football", he reports.
Pereira claims that the information that sport was, in the early years of the last century, a predominantly aristocratic activity is true. "But the practice of football was not restricted to just this social segment. Working-class teams, like Bangu, also valued the game. The process takes place in parallel and with great contact. The smaller clubs mirrored the larger ones, which had structure and money. These, in turn, would look for the players who stood out in the humblest associations", explains the historian.
At the beginning of the 30s, according to the researcher, football was already attracting a growing number of players and spectators. Until then, however, the Brazilian team was made up exclusively of white players. Only in the 1934 World Cup was a black athlete, Leônidas da Silva, called up. In the following World Cup, after an agreement between the São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro football federations, which already exercised political dominance over the sport, there was greater ethnic openness and other Afro-descendants became part of the team. "It was precisely on the occasion of the 1938 World Cup that national sentiment was consolidated around football. Some images also crystallized in relation to black idols, such as Leônidas da Silva himself and also Domingos da Guia. In other words, the population as a whole starts to identify with a mixed-race team".
The historian says that, in 1938, crowds went to newspaper offices to read bulletins bringing the results of games played in France. "Popularization is linked to the fact that football has been appropriated by different subjects to construct a national identity. But this does not mean that it excludes the possibility of articulating other levels of identity, such as ethnic issues", says Pereira. Some personalities, according to him, contributed decisively to the sport gaining such status among the Brazilian public. One of them was journalist Mário Filho, who would later lend his name to Maracanã, which is still the largest stadium in the world today.
Pereira states that, in the 1930s, Mário Filho brought the concept of marketing to football. Through Jornal dos Sports, which he owns, the journalist started to promote classics such as Fla-Flu and create figures such as the vulture, symbol of the Gávea club. "But the greatest contribution he made was the creation of a national image of football. Following the thesis defended by sociologist Gilberto Freyre, who attributed positivity to Brazilian racial heritage, Mário Filho stated that Brazilian football was special because it mixed discipline and European rigidity to the malice, swagger and trickery that he saw as innate in Afro-descendants". In other words, Brazilian football is better because it promotes the integration of races, which gives an original and positive result.
The growth of football in national preference did not just catch the attention of the "mass". Several politicians also took advantage of the modality. In 1906, according to the historian, there was already a report of the presence of the President of the Republic in official games. A decade later, the Public Power appears as one of the "financiers" of the selection. This becomes more noticeable in Getúlio Vargas’ Estado Novo. Ministers at the time remained in constant contact with the Brazilian delegation, whose head was a man linked to the "father of the poor". A reading of Getúlio's diary, recently released, reveals that the politician was not a great fan of football - he played golf -, but he expressed surprise at the fact that the sport aroused so much "passion and hatred" among the population.
Footballmania. A social history of football in Rio de Janeiro (1902-1938)
Leonardo Affonso de Miranda Pereira
Nova Fronteira Publishing
374 pages
R$29,00
A minefield
An activity that touches the passionate side of the Brazilian people, football has become a fertile field in recent years for the proliferation of violence both inside and around stadiums. Healthy rivalry has given way to fighting and acts of vandalism, factors that are keeping the public away from games, notably those involving so-called "mass clubs". The phenomenon, also present in other countries, was the subject of a doctoral thesis defended in 1998 by professor Heloisa Helena Baldy dos Reis, from the Faculty of Physical Education (FEF) at Unicamp. According to her, the Brazilian problem has macro and micro-structural causes, ranging from sociocultural issues to the sport organization itself, including the omission of the authorities. For the researcher, who shortly afterwards analyzed the anti-violence measures adopted in Spain in her post-doctorate, Brazil is capable of achieving the results obtained by the European country, which practically eliminated actions of this nature from sporting and leisure events.
Heloisa's doctoral thesis focused on games held at Parque Antarctica, in Palmeiras. However, during 1997 and 1998 she also observed games at Morumbi, a stadium owned by São Paulo Futebol Clube. The objective, according to the teacher, was to uncover the roots of violence. During the two years that she observed the behavior of fans, she witnessed numerous cases of fights, attacks and acts of vandalism. Among the direct causes of the problem, according to the researcher, is the lack of adequate structure for holding crowd events. Stadiums, in general, do not offer seats in all sectors. Often, toilets are in poor condition and there are not enough of them to serve the public. "This creates a degree of irritability among some fans, who damage the facilities or vent their dissatisfaction against their opponents."
In fact, says Heloisa, fans' irritation starts well before the ball rolls. Often, he does not know, until the day before the game, where, how and under what circumstances the match will take place. When everything is defined, the difficulty arises in purchasing the ticket. Then comes the hassle of getting to the stadium. The option, in this case, is between taking a crowded bus or going by car and being attacked by the flannels. As if that weren't enough, the event is usually scheduled for an inappropriate time due to television interest. "In a violent country like ours, it is absurd to start the game at 21:45 pm!" criticizes the researcher.
The Police, says Heloisa, makes its share of contributions to this state of affairs. "The use of physical and moral aggression by police officers generates even more violence. Furthermore, the corporation is not prepared to act in crowd events", she attests. According to the FEF professor, the problem also depends on the tolerance of public authorities. Contrary to what happens in Europe, there is a lack of specific legislation to punish offenders. “General legal standards are rarely applied,” she laments. In Spain or Italy, violent fans pay a huge financial fine and are also banned from attending the stadium for a certain period. On game days and times, he is obliged to report to the nearest police station or the one at the stadium itself.
Despite the seriousness of the Brazilian situation, Heloisa believes that it is possible to reverse it, following the example of what was done in Spain, a country identified by the European Community as the one that best knew how to face the problem of violence in football stadiums. According to the FEF professor, it is not simply a matter of importing measures, but rather of analyzing positive experiences and adapting them to our reality. The Spanish model, she confirms, practically eradicated aggressive acts from sporting events. The main measure was the creation of working committees, at national level and in the provinces (states), which analyzed the issue and proposed short and medium-term measures.
These commissions, according to Heloisa, brought together various segments directly or indirectly linked to sport, such as athletes, managers, politicians, fans, police officers, journalists, researchers, etc. "I believe that this initiative would be important for us to start facing the problem of violence head-on", says the FEF professor. Among the short-term actions suggested by the researcher are: prohibition of the sale of alcoholic beverages in or near stadiums, combating drug consumption by fans, advance sale of tickets with the identification of buyers, effective and early surveillance of the stadium and carrying out foreplay and other events to distract the public.
In the medium term, Heloisa recommends, in addition to the creation of permanent commissions to discuss the issue of violence and the drafting of specific legislation to punish offenders, the use of closed circuit television, continuous review of security devices, placement of numbered chairs in all sectors of the stadium, development of standards regarding the materials that must be used in the construction of new stadiums, promotion of preparatory and recycling courses for PM, request for clubs to create security coordinators and granting a one-year deadline for stadiums to provide one door for every thousand potential fans. "I'm optimistic. I'm convinced that, with these actions, we will be able to revive football as a spectacle", says the FEF professor. (MAF)
