Soccer in Sun and Shadow

Turning Pro

Even though recent scandals (“clean hands, clean feet”) have put the bosses of Italy’s biggest clubs on the spot, soccer is still among the country’s ten most important industries, and it remains a magnet for South American players.

Italy was already a Mecca way back in the time of Mussolini. Nowhere else in the world did they pay so well. Players would threaten the owners with “I’m going to Italy,” and those magic words would loosen the purse strings. Some really did go, traveling by ship from Buenos Aires, Montevideo, São Paulo, and Rio de Janeiro, and if they didn’t have Italian parents or grandparents somebody in Rome would invent a family on the spot for immediate citizenship.

The exodus of players was one factor that led to the birth of professional soccer in our countries. In 1931 Argentina turned pro, and Uruguay followed suit the next year. In Brazil a professional league was launched in 1934. That was when they legalized payments previously made under the table, and the player became a worker. The contract tied him to the club full-time and for life, and he could not change his workplace unless the team sold him. Like a factory worker, the player traded his labor for a wage and became as much a prisoner on the field as a serf on a manor. But in the early days the demands of professional soccer weren’t great: only two hours a week of obligatory training. In Argentina anyone missing a practice session without a doctor’s note paid a five-peso fine.