Thirty-One Nil

by James Montague

  What message do you want to send FIFA and the football world, I ask them both.

  ‘Please, please, make more pressure on our government, on the Brazilian government to look out for us,’ says Freitas before she makes her way back to the protestors, Sanabria still clutching his injured hand. ‘They are looking out for people outside the country, they aren’t looking for us, for the poor people.’ They now had the world’s attention.

  **

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  The Estádio do Maracanã in Rio de Janeiro has a special, rueful place in the Brazilian psyche. It is beloved by all who have seen it, even at its rundown worst. When it came to be renovated for the first time, it was feared it was an impossible task. So much human urine had been expelled over its concrete foundations that it had made the stadium structurally unsound. It was also the venue of an event that Brazilians had never forgotten, from the last time the country hosted the tournament: the 1950 World Cup final. Those who weren’t born then have never been allowed to forget it either.

  In 1950 the World Cup wasn’t the mega-sponsorship event it is today. There were fewer teams and those that did make it had to travel for days to get there. ‘In 1950 we played Besiktas of Istanbul, in St Louis,’ explains former United States captain Walter Bahr, who played in arguably the second most famous match in the tournament: when the USA beat England 1-0 in Belo Horizonte. ‘They [Besiktas] beat us badly, 5-0,’ he recalls. ‘It was a try out as much as anything, and then we faced an English select team with Stanley Matthews playing, in New York, and they won 1-0. Those were the first times the World Cup team played together. The next day we left for Brazil. It took us two and a half days to get down there!’ There was a different format for the competition, too. The final was actually a final group game. Brazil merely needed to draw against their tiny neighbours Uruguay to become world champions. So convinced were the Brazilians that they would triumph several newspapers went to print convinced that Brazil were already world champions. O Mundo’s front page, printed that morning, read ‘These Are The World Champions’. The Maracanã was full, with as many as 210,000 fans. They watched Brazil take the lead in the forty-seventh minute, too. Yet they somehow went on to lose the match 2-1. The catastrophe was so deeply felt that a word exists today in Portuguese from that game. Maracanazo means an unexpected victory for the underdog over one of the big teams in Brazil. Tahiti had walked on to the Maracanã pitch hoping that they, too, could channel the spirit of Uruguay 1950 before they took on Spain. It would be difficult to find a bigger mismatch in any sport anywhere on earth. Outside the stadium Spanish fans had arrived taking bets on whether it would be 10-, 11-, 12-0. Before the game Etaeta had said he didn’t think Spain had any interest in destroying his team. ‘I spoke with Vincente del Bosque,’ he had happily told me. ‘He is a good man, with good values that we share. He has no interest in humiliating us.’

  The Spanish players didn’t get the message. As in Belo Horizonte, the Maracanã crowd was brutally pro-Tahiti. Unlike in Belo Horizonte, though, where every black player who touched the ball was booed, only Fernando Torres received the same treatment. Before the game, goalkeeper Mickaël Roche, the PE teacher, had placed a garland of shells around Torres’ neck. Torres responded by tormenting him, scoring at his near post within four minutes. When Torres scored Spain’s third he left Roche on his backside, skipping around him and passing the ball into the empty net. David Villa nutmegged him. Torres scored a hat-trick. Villa’s hat-trick came when Roche completely missed a ball over the top. Mata nutmegged him, too. Every goal was met with a disappointed shriek from the crowd. The biggest cheer, though, was reserved for Fernando Torres when he missed a penalty. It finished 10-0. It was a bloodbath, a record defeat in any major FIFA finals. Gone was the joyful expression from Etaeta’s face, that a goal – no matter what else happened – was all that mattered. ‘It hurts, it is really tough to take,’ he says after the match, eyes on the floor, mumbling his answers. I wasn’t sure whether he was more upset by the defeat or the fact that Vincente del Bosque was more than happy to humiliate Tahiti. Or at least his players were. Mickaël Roche was the player I worried about most. Spending time with American Samoa’s Nicky Salapu had shown me the destructive power that a heavy defeat can have on someone’s life, even on their long-term state of mind. Roche was the last player to leave the stadium. ‘All the players had a hard job tonight,’ he says sheepishly when he finally decides to go back to the hotel. He had spoken to his opposite number, Iker Casillas, but he wanted to keep the words between them to himself. ‘It’s really hard because I hate having goals scored against me, but ten? It really hurts. I’ve got to accept that. I just want to keep in mind the wonderful supporters. It was awesome. They don’t know us and for them to be cheering us like this was awesome.’ Tahiti’s Confederations Cup journey ended against Uruguay, with a marginally better outcome. They only lost 8-0. Tahiti had finished the tournament with a record of played three, lost three, scored one, conceded twenty-four at an average of eight a game. Maracanazo was nowhere to be seen. At the end of the match the players did a lap of honour anyway, carrying a banner that read: ‘Obrigado, Brasil!’ Thank you, Brazil.

  The fireworks don’t end at the final whistle in the Maracanã. Another protest has been planned to coincide with the Tahiti match. This time it is to be the biggest yet. More than 300,000 peaceful protesters have marched in Rio to coincide with the Spain–Tahiti kick-off. Just like in Belo Horizonte and the other host cities they denounce FIFA, the government, the president, Sepp Blatter, big business and the mayor. After the game I catch the tail end of the mass of people moving north. They are young, mostly university students. Many are with their parents. One sign catches my eye, cleverly segueing the country’s poor state education system with its excellence on the football pitch.

  ‘Brazil doesn’t teach soccer in school,’ it reads. ‘That’s why Brazilians are good at soccer.’

  The protest thins out the closer I get to the front. The movement is now in the opposite direction, as people leave to go home. It has been a long and exhausting march for them. At the front Rio’s riot police are standing, two deep, in full body armour, shields up high with guns and water cannons behind them for back-up. A handful of protesters, half a dozen perhaps, no more, begin to goad the police, throwing bottles that crash metres from their feet. This police force aren’t like their counterparts in Belo Horizonte. Rio’s police are skilled in the art of favela pacification, an Orwellian term for local martial law where police effectively ‘take back’ areas of the city overrun by gangs and drug lords and patrol it with impunity until order is restored. As soon as they sense a provocation, they move forward, firing tear gas at first. I watch as they stop, fire, and move, blasting shotguns with rubber bullets into the backs of the fleeing crowd.

  Hundreds of police march down Avenida President Vargas, past smashed out banks and shops, past burning barricades and cars. They fire at the slightest movements, or hurl stun grenades, three or four at a time, down side passages. One lands by my leg, temporarily blinding and deafening me. When the buzz of disorientation fades I’m breathing tear gas and retching into the gutter. I’m kneeling on the pavement with gunshots firing all around me, reaching for a bottle of vinegar I’d packed for just such an event. Having heard of Igor’s experiences in Belo Horizonte I had gone that morning to a hardware shop and a supermarket. A gas mask was too expensive, but a painter’s face mask was a good alternative. Seamus, a film maker who had shot the entire thing, and I huddled together, pouring vinegar on to our faces to counteract the tear gas. When our sight had returned, the streets looked like a war zone. A 300,000-strong largely peaceful protest had been pacified. The spotlight and downdraught of a hovering police helicopter moved along a now empty Avenida President Vargas, looking for anyone foolish enough to defy it. A last stand of protesters waited on the steps of Rio’s beautifully grand municipal theatre. Tear gas had filled the square’s surrounding restaurants and cafés, families and co
uples and friends trapped inside, crying, holding napkins and scarves to their mouths to keep out the gas. But everyone here was cleared, too, by flash grenades, advancing police lines and, as a last resort, the crack of a baton.

  It was made plain that night. If the football continued, so would the protests. Yet for all the problems off the pitch, Brazil had been enjoying a brilliant tournament on it. As the 1950 World Cup final proved, the national team – A Seleção – generally operated under almost inhuman pressure. Eyes were now elsewhere. And when it came to be asked about the protests the players took the side of the people, agreeing with their aims and the cause, while also denouncing the violence. Romario, one of Brazil’s greatest ever players, also criticised FIFA and the government. Once an uncontrollable wild child blessed with almost supernatural talent, Romario is now one of the country’s most upstanding politicians. ‘We want and demand what is ours,’ he said after the Rio protest. ‘Enough robbery, lack of attitude, humiliation. Let’s make the government understand that Brazil belongs to the Brazilians, and we will not tolerate in silence the absurd things that have been happening. Congratulations, Brazilians!’

  Other former greats had not covered themselves in glory, however. Ronaldo and Pelé had both been castigated for suggesting stupidly insensitive things, such as stating that ‘you can’t play a World Cup in a hospital’ or that Brazil ‘should forget all the confusion’ and just back the Brazil team. It was the age-old bread and circuses caricature that Brazilians were tired of. The military dictatorship used to think the same: with football, everything else is forgotten. But that has changed now. They can still love football, but also hate the extraordinary cost of hosting the World Cup finals.

  Nearby a white and blue Brazilian police kiosk has been burned out. Only a few hundred protesters remain on the streets, dazed and walking in different directions. The police have returned, angrily pulling out the poles and burning tyres that had been thrown into their smouldering, melted workplace. This, remember, followed a group game between Spain and Tahiti. The Brazil team’s progress has not been affected by the largest protests. Their matches have proceeded relatively unmolested and the team have easily qualified for the semi-final after beating Japan, Mexico and Italy. They will play Uruguay, their tormentors from 1950, in Belo Horizonte. But the protests will finally follow them.

  **

  Belo Horizonte, Brazil

  The morning of the Brazil v Uruguay semi-final begins in an almost carnival-like atmosphere at Praça Sete de Setembro, where I had seen the bedraggled last stand from the first protests to hit the Confederations Cup nine days earlier. Thousands have arrived here at midday for the six-kilometre hike to the stadium. Beautiful girls chant and sing as drummers beat out protest songs you could dance to. Mothers and fathers have brought their children to taste protest for the first time. Leftist political groups hand out leaflets that match their placards, calling for more education and less corruption. Copa Pra Quem? One leaflet reads: Cup for Who?

  The police were there, too, showing a different face from the force I had seen crushing the protest in Rio. This time they have sent a dozen or so female officers, without riot gear, into the square to hand out leaflets calling on the protesters to denounce violence. From the Military Police of Minas Gerais, the leaflet begins, Protest in Peace. Democracy, Yes. Vandalism, No. On the flipside is a map to warn people where the police will be stationed and where the protesters will not be allowed to walk. ‘FIFA, we don’t want the cup to come to Brazil, because Brazil has many other problems,’ shouts a sixty-three-year-old playwright with a wild grey beard and matching hair who calls himself Mao. ‘The next cup, go to the United States. Brazil doesn’t need you. Brazil needs other things.’ The march moves slowly along the main highway out of the city in the midday heat. Along the way the numbers swell. Gangs of agitated young men, shirtless, their faces already covered, join as the march passes two favelas. They don’t want to talk, and they don’t want to be photographed. By the time the 50,000 have walked the length of Avenida Antônio Carlos and reach the slip road to the Mineirão Stadium, volunteers and activists have formed a human chain to stop anyone from reaching the barricade where the police are waiting, like a black brick wall. They are shouting for the protesters to ignore the police, and move onwards. The sun is slipping towards the horizon now but it still burns as it sets over the metal barricades that separate the 50,000 or so protesters from the line of military police. I look at my watch. In a few minutes’ time, one kilometre up the road the police in full riot gear are guarding, Brazil will play Uruguay in the Confederations Cup semi-final. There is no chance I’ll make kick-off.

  The activists’ human shield makes no difference. Hundreds push past them, running to meet the police head-on. The protesters stand in front of the barricade, faces covered in football scarves, T-shirts and V for Vendetta masks, like a million other people who have gathered near stadiums in Rio, Fortaleza, Porto Alegre, Recife and Brasilia as the Confederations Cup circus moves from city to city. The protests are a long way from the sycophantic eulogies to smiling, barefoot favela kids splashing through sewers with a ball at their feet. This is Belo Horizonte’s third and biggest protest so far. A single stone flies over the barricades towards the military police. A few others have been thrown before, but this one travels the furthest. A barely audible thlump replies, arching a trail of smoke high above the barricade. A tear gas canister lands at our feet, bouncing and spinning around, crazily spewing thick white plumes of smoke in every direction. The choking fog brings near total silence, save for the coughing and the wailing of those not wearing a gas mask. As it clears, the inexorable mechanics of revenge begin. The atmosphere changes from one of progressive idealism to violence. A small group has come prepared with fireworks, cherry bombs and slingshots. Activists in gas masks scurry around between them, picking up the freshly fired, still smoking tear gas canisters, placing them in empty plastic water coolers before jamming the lid on, neutralising the smoke instantly. Volunteer medics go from one prone protester to another, squirting a milky-blue coloured alkaline solution into the eyes of casualties screaming on the floor. Those who didn’t come prepared scrabble at the dirt, yanking up cobblestones and slabs of concrete. ‘They are crazy, they are poor people,’ says Binho, a young protester. ‘They do not know how to make protests and make signs and stuff. They are doing what they have to do.’ I ask him whether that is really an excuse. Does he not think that the violence undermines the protesters’ aims? But a stun grenade and gas canister land a few metres away, and we flee, going our separate ways before he can answer.

  Within the hour the protesters own the street. The police are now trapped in their temporary quarters, a barracks they have set up, inexplicably, in a natural depression where the protesters can surround them from the higher ground. It has a single entrance and exit, which is blocked by burning tyres and cars. Young men demolish the streets around them. Flash grenades, rubber bullets and tear gas no longer work. A Kia car showroom is ransacked and set ablaze. Its vehicles are pushed through the windows and into the street, before being rolled over and set on fire. Unlike the police of Rio, Belo Horizonte’s forces are easily bested. There are no guns or weaponry other than rocks, slingshots and the sheer numbers of protesters. I watch, hidden under a corrugated roof, as hundreds of rocks are thrown by boys no older than seventeen into the place where the police are sheltering. When one building is destroyed, another is set upon, and another, and another. It is only a matter of time before the crowd move towards the VW garage opposite: a huge glass building that the staff have bolted shut. They are now hiding behind their desks but, given that the whole building is effectively a big glass box and the lights are blazing inside, it’s easy to see where they are. The building is surrounded as 200 people pelt the glass with rocks. ‘I don’t give a fuck,’ shouts one man, his top off, a black scarf around his head and face as he moves past me. He is holding a rock in his hands. ‘Fuck the police, the bitches!’ he shouts, turning an
d throwing his rock in one graceful movement. It sails into the pane of glass with a crunch. The terrified staff can be seen hiding in a back room now. Gunshots are fired back, seemingly from inside the showroom, scattering the protesters. They are only permanently pushed back when a military police helicopter swoops low, using its downdraught to knock those beneath it to the ground. But it also activates the tear gas and broken glass, swirling it around us into a vicious cloud. We dive to the floor and cover our eyes. When I open them again the riot police have broken through and are surrounding the garage.

  The streets outside the stadium are empty now. The protesters, the rioters, whatever you want to call them, have fled, burning out shops and cars along the way. They have left their barricades behind, which now burn untended. Among the flames are the charred remains of two motorbikes, a car and an upturned plastic swimming pool that has been dragged from a nearby shop. In the ashes the corners of plastic signs can be seen poking out, half-formed words of solidarity and splashes of handwritten slogans. The banners of the protesters had also been thrown on to the fire. It is a long, tiring six-kilometre walk back to the city. No taxi will come here or dare stop nearby. The only vehicle that moves down the empty road back towards Belo Horizonte is a police riot van with loudspeakers blaring. They warn residents to stay inside. Bandits are on the prowl, they say. It takes over an hour to walk back. Only then do I remember the match. No one at the protest had thought to ask, but Brazil had beaten Uruguay 2-1. They would play Spain in the final.

  **

  Rio de Janeiro, Brazil

  On the day of the final the Maracanã is surrounded by a ring of steel. Horses, dogs, batons, armoured personnel carriers, guns, tear gas; the full arsenal of the military police is on show. There are a few small protests nearby but the final passes largely peacefully. The arriving fans are more interested in having their pictures taken in front of the thousands of security personnel stationed outside. For once, football takes precedence. The Maracanã is full, singing the national anthem. When the band stops, the Maracanã sings the second verse, unscripted. It isn’t a show of blind nationalism, or a snub to the protesters. The protesters have reignited a pride and a hope that things don’t always have to be this way any more. The president Dilma Rousseff was genuinely shocked by the protests. A leftist who had been tortured under Brazil’s military dictatorship and who felt some kinship with the street protests, Dilma promises to ringfence Brazil’s oil profits and pour them into education. She also promises to recruit thousands of foreign doctors as a stop-gap measure to improve healthcare until more Brazilian doctors can be trained to take their places. A flurry of reforms to politicians’ perks, transparency over their spending and the promise to drop a law that will make it harder to prosecute corrupt politicians all follow.