by Simon Kuper
“Organized violence here spread from soccer to the rest of society, whereas in Europe, it was the other way around,” said Romero. That is what happens in a poor country with rich soccer clubs. In Argentina, the big clubs are the Microsofts and Fords of the nation’s economy. The Dynamo Kiev mafia in Ukraine is another example of a big team in a backward state. “The president of River Plate,” Osvaldo Ardiles has said, “is more important than the governor of a small province.”
Romero put it more strongly: “I am 50 years old, so I was born in 1943, the year of a coup. The soccer regime has been a more constant political presence in my life than our juntas. ‘Politics passes, soccer remains,’ ” he quoted an Argentine sage. “It is as eternal as the armed forces, or the Church.”
Soccer is a shortcut to power. The biggest soccer clubs have tens of thousands of members, who come to the club every day for all sorts of activities. For example, clubs run kindergartens, primary schools and high schools, most of them with long waiting lists, and River Plate are even planning to set up a university. I tried to picture the University of Oxford United. “The University of Reeber!” laughed Romero. “Where is the state?” Is soccer a state within the state? “Yes, but the soccer state is more convenient, more direct”—there a man can act without worrying about democracy.
It was noisy in the war room. A window was slightly ajar, and the ancient cars of Buenos Aires frequently drowned out General Sanchez. Maybe, I pondered, the window had not been closed properly during the Falklands War, and the generals had not been able to hear one another. I was in the building of the Supreme Council of the Argentine Armed Forces, the highest military organ in Argentina, and the setting was classic South America. The Supreme Council building is shrouded by palm trees, guarded by soldiers with moustaches and machine guns, and stands directly beneath a large advertising board. At reception I handed in my British passport.
An aide ushered in Sanchez, a member of the Supreme Council, and we shook hands solemnly. Sanchez is not his name, but I recently received a letter from him begging me not to mention him or the Supreme Council in my book, and I decided to grant at least half of his request.
Sanchez is a tall thin man with a military moustache—no surprises there—who looks like Enoch Powell. He had primed himself for our meeting. He was carrying two files, one containing his incidental writings on soccer, and the other his book on soccer tactics. Written in 1951, it had never been published, and what he had in the file was the original, yellowed, typed manuscript. He looked nervous: he had walked around with his ideas in these dusty files for 40 years, and here was someone who wanted to know. It was why he had overcome his natural caution to speak to me.
He began by telling me about the “Superteam” he describes in his book. “It plays total soccer—you know that Holland played total soccer, Johan Cruyff. When a team attacks, it must attack with all; when it defends, it defends with all. Because with all together, it is easier to fight.” He was keen to make clear that his Superteam played 4-3-3, not 4-4-2, and that though he was convinced of his system, “I don’t believe I have the absolute truth.” It was the phrase of a man who takes his views seriously. After all, he is a man with power. Soccer managers hate listening to laymen: Brian Clough, for instance, grew short with a club director, a pork butcher who tried to tell him his business. But would a manager consider a general with battlefield experience to be a layman? Would it be safe to do so in Argentina? I asked Sanchez whether he had ever talked tactics with any of Argentina’s managers. He said not, but took from his file a letter he had written to Menotti in 1982, before the World Cup in Spain. “Soccer is a spiritual support to the nation,” read the General. “That is its value. We support you in your endeavor.”
Early on, a tension developed in the conversation. General Sanchez wanted to talk about tactics. I wanted to talk about soccer and politics, soccer and national culture, and soccer and military strategy. “If my team is concentrated on this small piece of paper,” Sanchez would gesticulate, “and the opposition is spread out over that big file, then I will have superior numbers in the crucial areas. You must have a force that is compact, organized and moving forward.” I suggested that his ideas on soccer rang somewhat military. “No, It’s not military,” he snapped, before adding: “The principles of war can be applied to anything.” I suspected that he had done things the other way around: that he had applied his theories on soccer to military strategy, rather than vice versa. It was chilling to listen to: old men all around the world expound half-baked coaching-manual wisdoms, but here was one who might use them on a battlefield.
I asked why the general loved soccer so. “In soccer is the force of a people. Rugby is also about the body, but it does not have the penetration to the public. Soccer is the great passion of the Argentinian people, just as American football is the all-consuming love of the American people,” he said, revealing a sketchy knowledge of the USA. And he admitted: “For myself, I cannot see the skill or the interest in American football. It is a brute sport.”
How important was it for a country to have a great soccer team? It was “important for the spiritual state of the population. I am not speaking so much of Argentina, but particularly of the African peoples, of nations who in general have no great culture.”
I quoted General Enciso: “Argentina is known in the world for the quality of its meat, of its soccer, for the singer Carlos Gardel, for its Formula 1 drivers—but especially for polo and soccer.” “We Argentinians will not tolerate that we are only spoken of for our soccer,” Sanchez replied sternly. “Argentina has its own values, not just soccer.” What were they then? His list included courage, modernity, technology and medical care. We argued. I insisted that if General Sanchez were to step into an English pub and ask the clientèle to associate with “Argentina,” the response would be, “Diego Maradona,” and not “medical care.” This was just not true, said Sanchez.
I broached the topic of the Falklands. Did General Sanchez agree with General Enciso, that the popular euphoria around the 1978 World Cup was similar to the euphoria around the Malvinas? He looked blank. I had to explain the question three times before he said that yes, he more or less did see it that way. It was something he had never considered before: General Sanchez is just not interested in political culture. “Are you more interested in the game itself, or in the social aspects?” he asked. He looked hurt.
The conversation tailed off, and Sanchez gave me a brief guided tour of the building, built centuries before by a Spanish merchant, as he told me proudly. There was no one else around, and when the telephone rang in a room we were viewing the general answered it himself. We said goodbye at the front door. “I am worried that I have not answered your questions,” he fretted. “You will have to rearrange my answers.”
CHAPTER 17
PELÉ THE MALANDRO
ARMANDO NOGUEIRA, BRAZIL’S MOST famous soccer writer, lives in a penthouse flat overlooking a blue lake in southern Rio. We had been talking for two hours, and he had presented me with four of his books, when he suddenly had a new thought. He ran out of the room to fetch a frame that contained a letter and a photograph.
The photograph showed a scene from the World Cup of 1970, from the quarterfinal in Guadalajara between Brazil and England. More precisely, it showed Pelé and Bobby Moore. Pelé is tweaking Moore’s shirt between two fingers, while Moore is poking his foot precisely between Pelé’s legs at the ball. Both men are frowning with concentration, yet neither is so much as touching the other. The mutual courtesy is the astonishing fact. Moore had died of cancer while I was in Argentina, and he had been given long obituaries in the South American press.
The letter beside the photograph will be a Nogueira family treasure until the line dies out. It is from Pelé.
Athenaeum Hotel, Piccadilly, London.
My brother Armando,
If you ever describe this action with “Bob Moore” in your book Bola de Cristal, you could say that we were being too courteous f
or a World Cup game. But that is sport.
Your friend,
Pelé.
This sums up Brazilian soccer. Instead of noting that Brazil beat England and went on to win the World Cup, Pelé merely remarks on the beauty of an irrelevant incident. Consider also his reaction to Banks’ legendary save in the same match: “At that moment I hated Gordon Banks more than any man in soccer. But when I cooled down I had to applaud him with my heart.”
When we think of Brazil, we think of Pelé’s team. This Brazil first appeared in 1958, at the World Cup in Sweden, when Pelé was 17. Brazil beat the host nation 5-2 in the final, during which Brazilian fans chanted, “Samba, samba,” and after which the team ran a lap of honor first with their own flag, then with the flag of Sweden. That Brazil won the World Cup again in 1962, lost it in 1966, when Pelé was kicked out of the tournament, and won it again in 1970. The Brazilian style fleetingly reappeared in 1982, but nowadays is as likely to be found in Dutch or French colors as in the yellow and blue. As Brazil, it barely exists anymore. I was in Rio to find out why the Brazilians used to play that way, and why they no longer do.
Rio de Janeiro is really two cities: the one Johannesburg, the other Soweto. The rich, light-skinned people live along the beachfronts, and the poor, dark-skinned ones in the favelas on the mountains. The favelas are painted in pastel shades, and look like pretty summer houses from below, which is the angle from which the rich always see them. The rich never go up the mountains. The murder rate in the favelas is high, and the favela dwellers can sniff a rich man a mile away. The air-conditioned metro does not venture there, and there is no running water nor lighting nor beaches nor anything else. In the great days of Brazilian soccer, the favelas were the home of the Malandro.
We feel when we see Brazil play that the Brazilian style comes naturally to Brazilian people. The Brazilians think so too, and when you ask them to explain they talk about the Malandro.
The Malandro is a figure from Brazilian folklore. His ancestors were slaves—Brazil abolished slavery as late as 1888—and he is resolved to be completely free. He thinks discipline is a good thing for the mediocre, but not for the Malandro. He is a con man, a trickster. He works alone and obeys no rules. Though poor, he manages to dress well, to eat in the best places, and to charm beautiful women. The point is that Brazilians see themselves as Malandros: he stands for the national character. Or at least, he did.
Professor Muniz Sodre gestured upwards from his window. “Let me draw you a picture,” he said. “If you go to a favela,” and I would have been mad to do so, “you will see a woman—there is no man in the house—who takes care of her five or six boys. The smartest of these boys, who can flee from police if he needs to, who can put up a fight, is a good soccer player. He can dribble past life’s difficulties. He can provide food for his mother. There is a deep connection between tricking defenders on the soccer field and being a smart boy in real life. This boy is a Malandro.”
Classically, the Malandro is a black man, and he excels at the ancient sport of Brazilian blacks, the capoeira. The capoeira is a cross between a dance and a martial art. The dancer wears knives on his heels and dances around his opponent trying to cut him. The Malandro wears a silk scarf not just for style—it protects his neck in the capoeira. “You find the capoeira where you least expect it,” said Professor Sodre. “For example,” he grinned, “I am a capoerista. I am a master with the knife.”
I was surprised to hear it, as Sodre is also a 50-year-old professor of communications at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro. The air-conditioned lecture room in which we spoke was an outpost of Europe, far removed from black con-men with knives on their feet. Sodre explained: he was a mulatto, who had learned his capoeira from a black master in Bahia. The master had known all about Malandros. One day, a black foreigner had visited the master’s capoeira school, and Sodre had spoken to the man in French. Later, the master asked Sodre where the visitor came from.
“From French Guyana,” Sodre told him.
“Nonsense,” replied the master. “I know about guys like that. He’s a black man from Rio. He probably worked in the docks and picked up a few words of French there. He’s a Malandro!”
Sodre protested that the man had spoken perfect French.
“You’re too young to understand. But he can’t fool a Malandro like me,” the master told him. A Malandro, the master knew, is so clever that he can speak French without knowing any.
“To understand our soccer,” said Sodre, “you have to understand the capoeira. Capoeira is a way of tricking your opponent—not like boxing where if you are stronger you win. It is a body philosophy.”
The capoeira is a dance, but also a sport, and so is great Brazilian soccer. For years after the British brought soccer to Brazil, blacks were barred from Brazilian clubs, and mulattos who wanted to play powdered their faces to look whiter—echoes of South Africa. The great age of Brazilian soccer arrived when the blacks were allowed to play. The first great black soccer player was Leonidas, highest scorer in the World Cup of 1938, and Brazil’s three World Cups were won mainly by black men: Pelé, Didi, Garrincha, Jairzinho and so on. So “black” were these teams that when Didi married a white woman, he was nearly left out of the squad for the Swedish World Cup.
These players were not themselves capoeiristas, but they came from a culture that admired grace and trickery. They were soccer-playing Malandros. Sodre said: “The greatest soccer idols were the great dribblers, players like Garrincha and Pelé, who used to invent movements—the Dry Leaf, The Bicycle—just as the great capoeiristas did.” The archetypal Malandro soccer player was Garrincha, a tiny mulatto winger from the favelas. In a popular anecdote, the Brazilian manager is outlining the opposition’s game to his players, and when at last he finishes Garrincha asks him: “Have you told the other team all this? Then how do they know what they are supposed to do?” For the Malandro, the con man on the pitch, it was madness to plan how to play. You simply did what came to you. Garrincha could destroy systems, even though his one leg was longer than the other. The “Little Bird” played in three World Cups for Brazil and earned two winners’ medals, and on retiring found himself living with his wife and eight children in a slum very like the one he had come from. He drank himself to death, but a million people lined the streets of Rio for his funeral, and Garrincha: The Joy of the People is a famous Brazilian film. “Brazilian soccer is not only a sport,” said Sodre. “It’s a kind of stage play, a theatrical movement.”
They were staging a theatrical movement at the Maracaña that Sunday. A stand had collapsed the year before, killing three people, and the ground had been shut for months. The disaster was quite predictable, Brian Homewood, a British journalist working for Reuters in Rio told me. “Brazilian politicians like to build new things, rather than spend money on maintenance which nobody sees. Eventually something fell down.”
That day, the biggest stadium in the world looked in good shape, and the soccer was still as Sodre had described it. Vasco da Gama beat Botafogo 2-0 in what was probably the best game I saw all year—though hundreds of the best Brazilian players have gone abroad, neither of these teams were the best in Brazil, and not one player on the pitch was a regular international. The moment of the match was the first goal: a Vasco free kick hit the top of the Botafogo wall and rebounded to a Vasco forward who, from 25 yards out, volleyed it into the net. You can see goals like that at all levels of soccer, but most are flukes. This player swivelled his body to place the ball in the far right corner, where the keeper was not, to score a quite deliberate goal. The game was gloriously attacking.
“These are our roots,” Carlos Alberto Parreira, the manager of Brazil, told me a few days later, in the Joâo Havelange building in central Rio. Carlos Alberto captained Brazil in 1970; Carlos Alberto Silva managed them briefly in the 1980s; and Carlos Alberto Parreira, a dapper man in a tailored sports jacket, is a different person altogether. I was speaking to him at a press conference he gave to announce his s
quad for a friendly game against Poland. (It was then not even known where in the country the game would be played.) Parreira and the Brazilian press sat around a horseshoe table, the list of names was handed out, and then, instead of the manager explaining his choices to the gathering, the journalists came to his desk one by one for exclusive interviews. After he had given 20 or so “exclusives!” in an hour, it was my turn. Parreira still looked unruffled.
I asked whether his Brazil would be more attractive than the dreary side of 1990. He replied in perfect English: “When we played in England all the journalists asked me this. Yes, that is what we want. We want to go back to our roots: to the flat back four, to zonal marking and attacking soccer. That is how our players have played since they were boys.” His view is that even if he wanted to he could not change the way Brazil plays. He says the only manager he knows who changed a nation’s style and prospered was Carlos Bilardo, who won Argentina a World Cup by turning Menotti’s side into a gang of thugs. Parreira told me, “You cannot put Brazilians into a—,” and unable to think of the word, he tried to mime a straitjacket.
But Brazilians are changing. Take the fortunes of Brazil at the last six World Cups.
The manager who prepared the 1970 team, Joâo Saldanha, best known as a sports commentator, put his faith in Malandros. “Brazilian soccer is a thing played to music,” he said. Told that Pelé, Gerson, Rivelino and Tostao could not possibly play in one midfield, he replied, “I don’t care if they are all the same type of player, or if Rivelino and Gerson are both left-footed. They’re the best, they’re geniuses, let’s trust them. They’ll know what to do.” But Saldanha never made it to the World Cup.
