Soccer in Sun and Shadow

An Export Industry

Here is the itinerary of a player from the southern reaches of the globe who has good legs and good luck. From his hometown he moves to a provincial city, then from the provincial city to a small club in the country’s capital. The small club has no choice but to sell him to a large one. The large club, suffocated by debt, sells him to an even larger club in a larger country. And the player crowns his career in Europe.

All along this chain, the clubs, contractors, and intermediaries end up with the lion’s share of the money. Each link confirms and perpetuates inequality among the parties, from the hopeless plight of neighborhood clubs in poor countries to the omnipotence of the corporations that run European leagues.

In Uruguay, for example, soccer is an export industry that scorns the domestic market. The continuous outflow of good players means mediocre professional leagues and ever fewer, ever less fervent fans. People desert the stadiums to watch foreign matches on television. When the World Cup comes around, our players come from the four corners of the earth, meet on the plane, play together for a short while, and bid each other good-bye, without ever having time to jell into a real team: eleven heads, twenty-two legs and a single heart.

When Brazil won its fourth World Cup, only a few of the celebrating journalists managed to hide their nostalgia for the marvels of days past. The team of Romario and Bebeto played an efficient match, but it was stingy on poetry: a soccer much less Brazilian than the hypnotic play of Garrincha, Didi, Pelé, and their teammates in ’58, ’62 and ’70. More than one reporter noted the shortage of talent, and several commentators pointed to the style of play imposed by the manager, successful but lacking in magic: Brazil had sold its soul to modern soccer. But there was another point that went practically unmentioned: the great teams of the past were made up of Brazilians who played in Brazil. On the 1994 team, eight of them played in Europe. Romario, the highest-paid Latin American player in the world, was earning more in Spain than all eleven of Brazil’s ’58 team put together, who were some of the greatest artists in the history of soccer.

The stars of yesteryear were identified with a local club. Pelé was from Santos, Garrincha was from Botafogo, and Didi as well despite a fleeting experience overseas, and you could not imagine them without those colors or the yellow of the national team. That’s the way it was in Brazil and everywhere else, thanks to loyalty to the uniform or clauses in the contracts of feudal servitude that until recently tied players for life. In France, for example, clubs had property rights over players until they were thirty-four years old: they could go free once they were all washed up. Demanding freedom, France’s players joined the demonstrations of May 1968, when Paris barricades shook the world. They were led by Raymond Kopa.