Futebol

by Alex Bellos

  Futebol

  THE BRAZILIAN WAY OF LIFE

  ALEX BELLOS

  BLOOMSBURY

  First published in Great Britain 2002

  Copyright © Alex Bellos

  This electronic edition published 2009 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

  The right of Alex Bellos to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by him in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988

  All rights reserved. You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 36 Soho Square, London W1D 3QY

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

  eISBN: 978-1-40880-722-4

  www.bloomsbury.com/alexbellos

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  For Ella

  CONTENTS

  PREFACE BY SÓCRATES

  FOREWORD TO THE NEW PAPERBACK EDITION

  INTRODUCTION

  1. THE MATCH AT THE END OF THE WORLD

  2. HEROIC FEET

  3. THE FATEFUL FINAL

  4. TRIBAL GATHERINGS

  5. THE ANGEL WITH BENT LEGS

  6. CARNIVAL WITH A TWIST

  7. MY LITTLE TONY

  8. CARS, GIRLS AND KEEPING IT UP

  9. FROGS AND MIRACLES

  10. THE UNCONFOUNDABLE GOAL

  11. NAKED FUTEBOL

  12. A GAME OF TWO HEMISPHERES

  13. TORTOISE IN A TOP HAT

  14. WE LOST BECAUSE WE DIDN'T WIN

  15. SOCRATIC DIALOGUE

  POSTSCRIPT

  APPENDICES

  ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

  PICTURE CREDITS

  Preface

  by Sócrates Brasileiro

  I am absolutely enchanted – in all senses of the word – by passion. It is what guides us through the unknown like an experienced commander; angry seas never scare us when we face them with the madness of love. Of all nations, none has a people that loves and falls in love more than mine. We are surrounded by exaggeration, happiness, spontaneity and creation. The expression of hope on our faces is the trademark even of those who have never received the tiniest advantages of society. We devotedly believe in the new world and in the beautiful humanity we know we will construct, without the muzzle that can take our freedoms away or the whips that try to frighten us. Without the ignorance that would lead us to the stupor of an empty cocoon.

  Our populace that was born enslaved frees itself every day with a soaring voice in search of the truth. Its truth. That which bases its strength in an irremovable culture because it comes from the soul, from the aura, from the smile, and where whites and Indians, blacks and the poor, migrants and the young delight in life's pleasures. And what pleasures! A people who know what they really want even though they don't recognise how. Or do they?

  The answers that we search for require special care and attention.

  We are a people of a thousand faces and gestures. A people fighting to preserve our history against everything and against all the evidence and possibilities. A shrewd, vain and happy people who make good use of our natural wonders with the naturalness of the carefree. A people who love everything around them and who know how to extract the wisdom of a lifetime from every second. And a people who love football.

  Football is a sport made from spontaneity and discernment, luxury and freedom, and one that, I believe, is part of our most primitive genome, like dance. But football should also be a type of dance. A dose of peace.

  Alex Bellos, with the characteristic patience of a sage and the charmed curiosity of a scientist, shows us, with irrefutable clarity, our face and our soul. Just like a 'life theatre' in which we watch and discuss our daily lives without getting involved with its banality, our enchanted and enchanting neobrazilian travels across our immensity to discover who we are and why we are. And achieves this, with discernment and a rare sensibility.

  Foreword to the

  New Paperback Edition

  I researched and wrote this book in the two year run-up to the 2002 World Cup finals. It was an event that Brazilians feared as much as they looked forward to. With the national team having qualified by the skin of its teeth, the signs were that Korea and Japan would be the stage for international humiliation – confirmation that the beautiful game was dead. Instead, Brazil were champions. From being the year of crisis, 2002 became the crowning year of Brazilian supremacy. In reaching their third consecutive World Cup final the team had gone one better than the team of Pelé's generation. The victory meant that Brazil became the only nation to win the World Cup five times – two trophies more than their nearest rivals. It was both the worst and the best of times.

  Instead of changing the main text to make reference to the 2002 World Cup, any updates have been left to a short postscript at the end of chapters, and the appendices. The statistics may have changed, but the country stays the same.

  Rio de Janeiro

  December 2002

  INTRODUCTION

  Football arrived in Brazil in 1894. The 'violent British sport' did unexpectedly well. Within decades it was the strongest symbol of Brazilian identity. The national team, as we all know, has won more World Cups than anyone else. The country has also produced Pelé, the greatest player of all time. More than that, Brazilians invented a flamboyant, thrilling and graceful style that has set an unattainable benchmark for the rest of the world. Britons call it the 'beautiful game'. Brazilians call it 'futebol-arte', or art-football. Whichever term you choose, nothing in international sport has quite the same allure.

  I arrived in Brazil in 1998. I didn't do badly, either. I became a foreign correspondent. It was a job I'd always coveted and, journalistically speaking, Brazil is irresistible. The country is vast and colourful and diverse. Among its 170 million population there are more blacks than any other country except Nigeria, more Japanese than anywhere outside Japan, as well as 350,000 indigenous Indians, including maybe a dozen tribes who have not yet been contacted. Brazil is the world's leading producer of orange juice, coffee and sugar. It is also an industrialised nation, curiously one of the world's leading aeroplane-makers, and it has an impressive artistic heritage, especially in music and dance.

  And, of course, they've got an awful lot of football.

  Soon after I arrived I went to see the national team play. It was at the Maracanã, the spiritual home of Brazilian – ergo world – football. When the players filed on to the pitch, we jumped and cheered. The noise was like an electric storm, a rousing chorus of firecrackers, drumming and syncopated chants. It crystallised what I already knew; that the romance of Brazilian football is much more than the 'beautiful game'. We love Brazil because of the spectacle. Because their fans are so exuberantly happy. Because we know their stars by their first names – as if they are personal friends. Because the national team conveys a Utopian racial harmony. Because of the iconic golden yellow on their shirts.

  We love Brazil because they are Braziiiiiiiiiil.

  As a sports fan, I immediately took an interest in the domestic leagues. I read the sports pages, adopted a club and regularly went to matches. Following football is perhaps the most efficient way to integrate into Brazilian society.

  As a journalist,
I became increasingly fascinated with how football influences the way of life. And if football reflects culture, which I think it does, then what is it about Brazil that makes its footballers and its fans so . . . well . . . Brazilian.

  That's what this book is about.

  I first wanted to know how a British game brought over a little over a century ago could shape so strongly the destiny of a tropical nation. How could something as apparently benign as a team sport become the greatest unifying factor of the world's fifth-largest country? What do Brazilians mean when they say, with jingoistic pride, that they live in the 'football country'?

  If football is the world's most popular sport, and if Brazil is football's most successful nation, then the consequences of such a reputation must be far-reaching and unique. No other country is branded by a single sport, I believe, to the extent that Brazil is by football.

  The research took me a year. I flew, within the country's borders, the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I interviewed hundreds of people. First, the usual suspects: current and former players, club bosses, referees, scouts, journalists, historians and fans. Then, when I really wanted to get under the country's skin: priests, politicians, transvestites, musicians, judges, anthropologists, indian tribes and beauty queens. I also interviewed a man who makes a living performing keepie-uppies with ball bearings, rodeo stars who play football with bulls, a fan who is so peculiar-looking that he sells advertising space on his shirt and I discovered a secret plot involving Socrates and Libya's Colonel Muammar al-Gadaffi.

  I was not interested in 'facts', like results or team lineups. Brazil is not big on facts anyway; it is a country built on stories, myths and Chinese whispers. The written word is not – yet – as trusted as the spoken one. (One of the country's more infuriating customs, especially if you are a journalist.) I was interested in people's lives and the tales they told.

  The result, I hope, is a contemporary portrait of Latin America's largest country seen through its passion for football.

  Brazil is the country where funeral directors offer coffins with club crests, where offshore oil rigs are equipped with five-a-side pitches and where a football club can get you elected to parliament.

  I started my research in mid-2000, exactly half a century after the World Cup was held in Brazil and thirty years after Brazil won, so spectacularly, the title for the third time. It was a convenient starting point for reflection on the legacy of 'futebol-arte'.

  I claim no responsibility, but within weeks Brazilian football was plunging into its most serious crisis ever. The national team lost a sequence of matches and Congress began two wide-ranging investigations into the sport.

  The situation got worse and worse. Brazil kept on losing and Congressmen were shedding light upon a nasty and corrupt underworld. For a moment the unthinkable – that Brazil would fail to qualify for the 2002 World Cup – was a real possibility.

  I understand the crisis as a reflection of more general tensions. Since the 1950s, when Pelé started playing, Brazil has gone from an overwhelmingly rural and illiterate country to an urban and literate one. It has passed through two decades of dictatorship and is learning, sometimes uncomfortably, about how to create a new society.

  Meanwhile, the world is different. Football is also different. The only constant seems to be the magic we still invest in Brazil's golden yellow shirts.

  I followed the parliamentary investigations closely. I flew to Brasilia to see the hearings. I was there when Ronaldo was called to give evidence. He was being asked to explain to Congressmen why Brazil were only second best in the 1998 World Cup.

  'There are many truths,' the footballer told his interrogators. He said he would give 'his truth', and that he hoped it pleased them. But whether or not it was the 'true truth' – well, that was up to them.

  I immediately scribbled this down in my notebook. I thought it was the most unintentionally observant comment any footballer has ever made.

  Brazil has many 'truths'. This book is my search for the 'true truth' of Brazilian football. I hope it pleases you.

  Alex Bellos

  Rio de Janeiro

  November 2001

  Chapter One

  THE MATCH AT THE END

  OF THE WORLD

  From his window in the village of Toftir, Marcelo Marcolino looks out on to a snowy hill-face shrouded in a sombre mist. He complains that it is always the same, that the icy bleakness is never softened by a rainbow or a clear sky. Outside, the freezing wind is remorseless. The streets are deserted. Marcelo does not like to leave his house anyway; he spends most of his day watching satellite television in languages he does not understand.

  Marcelo always wanted to be a footballer. It was his dream ever since his childhood in Copacabana. Maybe for Flamengo, his favourite club in Rio de Janeiro. Even for their rivals, Fluminense, where his father had once played. He never imagined he would end up plying his trade in the dour north Atlantic, where the average summer temperature is almost ten degrees lower than the Brazilian winter. Where he once travelled to an away game by fishing boat.

  The Faroe Islands are halfway between Scotland and Iceland. They were probably first discovered by the Irish monk St Brendan, who sailed past them in the early sixth century. St Brendan was looking for Hy-Brazil, the mythical Isle of the Blessed and for some scholars the ancient origin of the name Brazil. One and a half millennia later the Faroes have been discovered by tropical travellers coming in the other direction. They have found their own bitter paradise.

  Marcelo first heard of the Faroes when the offer from Toftir's B68 came through. He picked up his visa at the Danish consulate in Rio de Janeiro. They told him to bring a coat. It was not enough. Arriving in Copenhagen to change planes, he felt his first gust of chilly air. 'Oh my God,' he thought, 'I want to go home.' B68 welcomed him at the airport on Vagar Island, in the west of the archipelago, the only location blessed with a runway's worth of flat land. Marcelo was then driven to Toftir, which involves a ferry and an hour-long drive along the islands' jagged contours. He noticed that the treeless Faroe scenery was covered in white. It was the first time he had seen snow.

  Even by Faroese terms, Toftir is small and remote. The village's population is 1,000 – about a twentieth the size of the capital, Tórshavn. Toftir is a settlement of a few hundred homes along a windswept coastal road. The houses are unfussy cubes with neat roofs. Toftir has no cinema or restaurant or pub. It has a fish market, a fish factory and a church. And a football club with three Brazilians.

  When I arrived at Marcelo's house, at lunchtime, he was fast asleep. Now, ten minutes later, he is up, pacing around with the energy of a hyperactive child. 'This house is my prison,' he says. 'It's difficult. I am used to another culture: beach, beers, women. Here people don't have lives. You don't go out.'

  Marcelo, who is twenty-nine, looks the part. His hair was a skinhead but he has allowed a few millimetres' growth for warmth. His black skin is lighter than it usually is in Brazil, a consequence of Toftir's sunless days. He stands elegantly upright and speaks looking down his nose, throwing his arms about and puffing his chest. He has cocky eyes and he likes the sound of his loud voice. His warm exuberance seems undiminished by the inclemency of his new surroundings.

  I ask if he goes out on weekends.

  'Not any more,' he replies. 'It takes an hour by bus to get to Tórshavn, and there's nothing much to do there anyway. We used to get invited to parties, but parties here are more like . . . death-watches.'

  He realises that he has got carried away with his criticisms. He calms down and changes his tone.

  'But I am happy. I don't complain. I am here because I am a professional and because I have the opportunity to make money. I would never be earning what I am now in Brazil.'

  B68 only train for two hours a day. During the morning their international striker works at the Toftir fish market. He lugs crates laden with cod and monkfish out of small fishing boats and on to the quays. It is not obligatory, but
the B68 president strongly encourages it. As well he might. B68's president is in charge of unloading fish at the Toftir fish market. There are lots of fish in the sea. He needs all the hands he can get.

  Marcelo, who is not the sort of man given to hard work, tries to do as little as possible. He tells me that he sees his role as scoring goals. Elegant, Brazilian goals. He may be in the Faroe Islands, but he has not lost his sense of national pride.

  He suddenly disappears to fetch a silver trophy from his room. He shows it to me boastfully: 'It's for Best Forward in the Faroese League 2000. Last season our top scorer got sixteen goals. I got fifteen. But he got a bucket-load of goals from penalties. I'm so much better than him but he's a mate of the coach.'

  Marcelo likes being a big tropical fish in a small northern sea. 'I'm the king around here,' he says. 'There's no one here who can do what I can do.'

  He also knows that he is living his dream, despite the miserable reality. Every Brazilian wants to play in Europe.

  'When I go back to Rio people treat me differently,' he brags. 'It's like I'm royalty. People realise you are an important person. No one else from my neighbourhood has played in Europe. If you say you play for a small local club, people make fun of you, as if the team is nothing. Brazilians respect you more if you are playing in Europe. People see you with different eyes.'

  He pauses again and adds: 'I will be able to tell my grandchildren that I was someone.'

  Unless you listen to Radio Four's shipping forecast or import cod there is little reason to be aware of the Faroes, an autonomous part of Denmark with a population of 47,000. The isolated islands have one of Europe's smallest football leagues and the national side is one of the continent's feeblest. A 1–0 victory against Luxembourg provoked national euphoria.