The Vasco Fiasco
has gained more attention though this blog than it did in the Brazilian media. Last
week, I talked with the BBC
World Fooball Report about it and comments continue to flow in from all
corners. Brazilians are horrified that I would consider leaving my team, expressing
concern that I’m not staying with Vasco. In Brazil
To reiterate
what happened: Vasco
were found by an investigator to have maintained their youth trainees in slave-like
conditions. I found this revolting, horrifying and immoral and in my disgust
wrote, “I am not this Vasco, I reject
this club.” This is a point that
needs some clarification and along the way I hope to plumb the depths of
footballing identities in Brazil
I am not, as
some have suggested, choosing to leave Vasco for another club, pick up another
mantle, or start watching the NBA playoffs. I understand and am deeply impacted
by what I write about. There is no need to justify myself, the depth of my
knowledge of Brazilian football, or the relative profundity of my Vasco-identidade.
My rejection of this Vasco suggests that there is another Vasco. I believe this to be
true. While the realities of Vasco’s project of social inclusion and racial
democracy were probably never as pure and altruistic as we would like to
believe, within the well-documented history of the club as a place where Rio ’s most disenfranchised were able to use football and the
Vasco club as a vehicle for social inclusion, there are elements of truth. What
is perhaps more important is that we
believe that this possibility exists and that we act to ensure its realization.
Leaving Vasco makes this impossible, but it is also impossible to “cheer” (está impossível torcer) for a team whose
labor pool is re-supplied with slaves, or indentured servants, or voluntary
serfs. Leaving is torture, staying is moral turpitude, doing nothing is
impossible, so I write. Mas que adianta marcar gol de letra em
posição de impedimento? But
what good does it do to score in an offside position? [losing all lyric
sensibility in English, btw]
That Vasco physically
and psychologically abuses its youth trainees in the name of economic
expediency kills the club’s claim to its own history and shoves in our faces the
cruel mechanisms of football’s political economy. We are all happy to ignore
these realities while watching games, stressing out about results, arguing
about the merits of our clubs. Yet critical reflection upon our own identities
as football fans surely must lead us to the point where we take some
responsibility for the Darwinian cesspool into which tens of thousands of young
Brazilian lives are thrown in order to produce the nucleus around which our
identities cluster.
This is my major
point of contention. I am Vasco but I do not, cannot and will not torcer for this team until I know that
the institution has been reformed and that youth players compensated, educated,
and cared for to the highest possible standard. Ignoring the current practices
legitimates them. If installing world class facilities requires a few years in
the second or third division, tudo bem! I prefer to lose with well-fed,
well-educated, and well-cared for players than to have a championship trophy
hoisted onto the tombstones of teenagers. Rejecting Vasco is radical, but not
nearly as radical as SLAVERY!
The commentaries
on the original post are clearly not random but reflect more general ideas that
legitimate slavery in Brazilian football. The “love it or leave it” attitude is
easy enough to ignore. The earnest apologists are a bit more difficult. One
recent comment said that there is “a media bias against Vasco’s president”
therefore the findings of the public prosecutor’s office “need to be questioned”.
Or that the trainees “don’t have contracts” so they can’t be considered slaves.
WTF? Slaves have contracts? Is Vasco only football? Are Vascainos so ready to
trade results for human dignity? Emotions are so tightly wound around Brazilian
football that it makes conversations about identity and reality nearly
impossible, prompting knee-jerk reactions that allow the club directors to
hijack identities for profit and power.
The way forward
is difficult. If Vasco is to have any claim to its own history it must again
make decisions based in values that are not associated with the market, that
are not aligned with the interests of the “elite clubs”, that are founded in
conceptions of human dignity and social justice. It is the responsibility of
all Vascainos to reshape the club so that these values will be represented on
the field, in the boardroom and in the bodies and minds of our youth.
