The sick,sad and tragic case of Bruno Souza

For those of you outside of Brazil, you might not have heard about the Flamengo goalie who after captaining his side to the Brazilian championship in 2009 was arrested under suspicion of having his ex-lover murdered. Jeremy Schapp and the E:60 team from the USA came to Brazil earlier in the year to investigate the case and produced this video, which aired globally two weeks ago (but not in Brazil or Latin America).


Bloodline - E:60 - Bruno from Evolve IMG Films Ltd. on Vimeo.


As part of some ongoing discussions that the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores has had with Marcelo Freixo, there are legal initiatives underway to make Brazil's football clubs responsible for educating their players. Currently there is no media training, no financial advice, no recompense for youth players who become injured. The clubs are basically employing a feudal labor system to generate profits, which are then duly pocketed (generally speaking) by amateurish club directors. The four big Rio teams are the four most indebtted clubs in Brazil. This is not too different from the fake amateurism of the NCAA or from the youth academies that European teams have set up in West Africa.

Was the Bruno case preventable? Should Flamengo have intervened? Does the structure of Brazilian football and their labor practices contribute to this kind of tragedy? Yes. Yes. Yes.