Futebol Explanatório 102

Barcelona 2 – Real Madrid 2, Spanish SuperCopa. 

In Europe generally and Spain more specifically, the previous season’s winners of the national cup competition (Real Madrid and the King’s Cup in this case) play the winners of the national league (Barcelona) in a one off game, in the Spanish case, home and away. This is the SuperCupa, good for filling the trophy case and for rubbing it in the face of the Madristas.

Messi playing for Barcelona is the best player in the world. Messi playing for Argentina is not Maradona. Club teams are forced to release players who are called up for national team duty. Botafogo’s porteiro, Jefferson, is the third string keeper for Brazil. He’ll never see the field, yet he gets called up for every friendly and qualifying match and Botafogo have some mão de alface (lettuce hands, one of my favorite Brazilian football expressions) minding the net.

The clubs are not compensated for giving away their best players for days, weeks, or months at a time, nor are they compensated if the player returns injured, crippled, or drunk (as has recently been the case with Fred at Fluminense, not to mention Adriano, coitado). FIFA determines the days set aside for international matches (friendlies or qualifiers) and tournaments. The clubs are told by national federations which players they “have” to release and the players trundle off to do their duty. The players get paid by the national federation for international appearances and there are likely some tidy bonuses thrown about when medals get hung around sweaty necks.

FIFA controls this from their buzzard’s perch in Switzerland. If you’re reading this blog I’m going to assume that you know about FIFA. National Football Federations or Associations are given membership in FIFA based on a two year affiliation with a regional confederation (FIFA divides the world into six regions, Europe - UEFA, Asia - AFA , Oceania - BOTO, Africa - CAF, South America- CONMEBOL, North and Central America + Caribbean - CONCACAF). Then they have to write a letter to the Secretary General of FIFA who decides, alone, if a country’s association is worthy of FIFA membership. There are 207 current members, with one vote each, organized and orchestrated through FIFA’s regional divisions. This very structure is a machine that generates corruption.

There are 32 spots available for the Men’s World Cup, unevenly distributed. FIFA allots 13 World Cup berths for European nations. 53 teams are sorted into 9 qualifying groups, the winners of which qualify directly for the World Cup while the 8 best second place teams will play a home and away series with the aggregate winners coming to Brazil. Africa will have 5 teams for the 2014 Cup following two rounds of qualifying. The 24 lowest ranked teams will play each other in a group round robin format before being placed in five qualifying groups that the highest ranked teams will join in. South America and Asia receive 4.5 berths each. This means that the fifth placed teams in each region will play each other for the right to go to Brazil. The same hold true of North and Central America and the Caribbean which has 3.5 berths to Oceania’s .5. Since Australia defied geology by leaving Oceania and heading  to Asia, FIFA took away the automatic qualifying from that region putting the winner of qualifying in a playoff against Honduras or Costa Rica (perpetual 3^rd or 4^th placers in the CONCACAF region).  Boring if you already know it.

The Draw that took place in Rio on the 30^th of July, which met with a very healthy protest led by the Comitê Popular da Copa and the Associação Nacional dos Torcedores, defined the qualifying groups for the World Cup. But now, the European national leagues are starting up again while the Brazilian and North American leagues (among others) are in mid-season.

This of course, is only dealing with men’s football. Women’s football is similar, though on a much smaller scale. Brazil has no functional women’s league, though many women play and there are nascent professional structures. The USA has a women’s league that appears to be healthy, though limited in geographic reach. There are no doubt fine places to read about that and I welcome any sugestõezinhas.

Right, that’s it for the football. Here’s a list of some good books:

Brilliant Orange, David Winner

The Ball is Round, David Goldblatt

Inventing the Pyramid, Jonathan Wilson

Foul!, Andrew Jennings

Would welcome additions for a reader bibliography that could be posted and shared on Zotero.com

Maracanã robbed! Botafogo Wins Carioca, the odyssey begins

The office of TWA, the company responsible for selling tickets to the Maracanã was robbed on Saturday, complicating ticket sales for the final game of the Taça Rio between Botafogo and Flamengo (won by O Glorioso). How is it that an office housed within the stadium itself, guarded by a special Stadium Police Force (GEPE) and a private security firm, behind 3 meter gates can get robbed the night before the final game of the championship? Strange indeed. 


Other robberies probably took place during the game as the law requiring that all game receipts be made public within 24 hours has been ignored by FERJ. The only information regarding attendance and money is that there were 50,303 paying spectators that generated R$ 1,677,565, for an average ticket price of R$33.34 - far above the R$19,00 average for the semi-finals. This is obviously incomplete information as the Vasco x Flamengo game had more than 6,000 free tickets issued. The entierty of the receipts for the Campeonato Carioca can be found here - with the glaring exception of yesterday's final. Curious. (Note - the receipts were posted on Tuesday 20/04)


With the end of the Carioca, we may actually see the beginning of the construction project for the 2014 World Cup, but don't hold your breath as there don't appear to be any architects, engineers, or anyone at all contracted to carry off the R$ 600,000,000 reforms. 

Campeonato Carioca

Today’s lesson in the geography of the obvious deals with the phenomenon of state soccer tournaments in Brazil. Each of the 26 Brazilian states holds multi-division tournaments between January and April, with the winner of the first division tournament gaining direct qualification for the Copa do Brasil (Brazil’s version of the FA Cup or US Open Cup). It is only after the end of the state tournaments that the four divisions of the Brazilian National Championship begin.

Why the state tournaments endure as a central feature of the Brazilian football calendar is something that I talk about in chapter two of Temples of the Earthbound Gods. The state tournaments are remnants of an era of the relative geographic isolation of Brazilian urban centers. Brazil is the same size as the continental United States, but the lack of efficient road, rail, and air transportation between the coastal cities and the interior has the effect of increasing geographic distance (as long as we consider time and space to be mutually constitutive). Because it was prohibitively expensive and time consuming to travel between Brazil’s major urban centers for most of the 20^th century, state tournaments made much more sense than a national tournament. Even today, the lower divisions of Brazilian football are organized on a regional basis because it is simply not possible for smaller teams to afford weekly air travel.

The advent of the Brazilian national championship (Brasilerão) in 1971 was as much a political project as a sporting one: the military government wanted a way to integrate the country through the popularity of football, using the Selecão’s third World Cup victory in 1970 to obtain political ends. That the Brasilerão changed its rules 31 times between 1971 and 2003 didn’t endear it to the general population and the state tournaments continued to hold more cultural importance for fans well into the 1990s.

The traditional state powers from the main urban centers were able to use the Brasilerão and television contracts to get bigger, while the teams that only competed in the state tournaments became relatively smaller, sending their best players up the food chain. So the situation we have today in Rio de Janeiro is that no team outside of the big four (Vasco, Botafogo, Fluminese, Flamengo) has won a state title since 1966, and only Americano, Volta Redonda and Madureira have managed to finish second in the last 40 years. Yesterday, Olaria managed to beat Vasco for the first time since 1971. This is front page news in Rio.

The state tournaments have turned into a training ground for the bigger clubs throughout Brazil. Attendances are abysmal, games are lopsided, and the influence of the OGlobo network on game times ensures that this situation will continue as mid week games can only begin after the novelas have ended at 10pm. Worse, the Rio State Football Federation can’t even make the Maracanã ticketing system work. They no longer sell tickets on the day of the game, and the stadium can no longer host clasicos because no one will take responsibility for managing the turnstiles. It’s a joke. The recent developments have highlighted the staggering amount of institutional change that is going to be necessary before Brazil is ready to host the World Cup in 2014.

After talking with Juca Kufuri about the insane state of affairs in Brazilan football, he suggested that the CBF and its corrupt puppet master Ricardo Teixeira intentionally keep Brazilian football in a state of chaos in order to valorize the Brazilian National Team at the expense of the clubs. If you go to any football store in the world, you will find jerseys of club and national teams from England, Italy, Spain, Germany, and Argentina. You will rarely if ever see a Brazilian club team jersey, but will always be able to find the CBF jersey. This is obvious but not accidental. The Brazilian football calendar is grossly out of synch with the International calendar, allowing European teams to poach Brazilian players in the middle of the Campeonato Brasileiro, further weakening the club game in Brazil.

Tonight there is a classico between Flamengo and Botafogo at the Fechadão. There won’t be many people in the stands, because the stadium accesses are terrible and potentially dangerous when two rival torcidas are arriving via the same transportation lines at the same time. The lack of planning on the part of the state and national federations is aggravated by the lack of concern shown by the city government and the absurd influence of the major television networks. All of these factors, plus the increasingly rapid decline of the smaller teams relative to the big teams in Rio has made for one of the worst Cariocas in recent memory – a situation produced by history, geography, politics, and economics that can only be relieved by the raw potential of football to transform the mundane into sublime.

A Pantera de Santarém

Nas primeiras duas rodadas do Campeonato Paraense, a Federação Paraense de Futebol (FPF) interditou o estádio de São Raimundo F.C. de Santarém sem explicações. Duas semanas depois, sem modificar o estádio de jeito nenhum, o FPF liberou o Colosso do Tapajós para sedear um jogo da Copa do Brasil entre ‘A Pantera’ e Botafogo F.C. de Rio de Janeiro. O placar de 1 a zero à favor do time Amazônico deu uma alegria aos Santarémenses, até a semana seguiente. Devido a um protesto de Botafogo com a Confederação Brasileiro de Futebol (CBF), foi revelado que a FPF demorou mais que uma semana em registrar três novos jogadores de São Raimundo e decidiu anular o resultado insólito de São Raimundo. Mas não só isso. O time pequeno de interior do Pará que não mostrou respeito suficiente ao time famoso do Rio de Janeiro sofreu uma perda de seis (6) pontos! A partida de volta foi marcado pelo dia 11 de Março no Stadium Rio o estádio mais novo do Brasil (também conhecido como Estádio Olímpico, Estádio João Havelange, Engenhão, e o Fechadão). Com três pontos à menos entrando o campo, A Pantera precisava de ganhar no tempo regulamentário e depois ganhar os penalites.

Botafogo saiu na frente, a Pantera empatou. Botafogo de novo, dois a um. Logo depois um gol de São Raimundo anulado sem explicações. O juiz ficou com cara de pão, deixou tudo o mundo saber que a justiça futebolística não é cega. Botafogo marcou seu terceiro, e tudo o mundo anticipou a porrada, mais São Raimundo marcou de novo, três a dois, antes de Botafogo meteu seu quarto gol. São Raimundo, time lutador, fechou o placar 4-3. A Pantera não morreu de nem mostrou inferioridade ou provincialidade, só umas falhas graves na defesa revelavam a distância entre o campeão de Campeonato Brasileiro Serie D 2009 e o Botafogo de Garrincha que só salvou sua posição na Serie A na última rodada do ano passado.

No marcador global, os times empatavam 4-4, com três gols fora de casa para a Pantera. Se o PFP tivesse submetido os papeis dos jogadores o São Raimundo ia-ter eliminado a Estrela Solitária, por conta de gols marcados fora de casa.

Vemos aqui dois, talvez, três tipos de discriminação. O primeiro é a discriminação contra times do interior de Pará vendo de Belém. O PFP é controlado por dirigentes dos dois grandes times do capital, Remo e Paissandu. O Remo não está disputando nenhum campeonato nacional, enquanto o São Raimundo subiu a Brasilleirão Serie C. O Paissandu, há poucos anos, estava disputando a Brasileirão Serie A, mas caiu até o D. Historicamente o Remo e o Paissandu tenham sido os grandes representantes de futebol Amazônica em Brasil, porque Manaus (que receberá um estádio novo pelo Mundial 2014) não tem tradição futebolística nenhuma. O sucesso dos Santarémenses tanto na ultimo edição de Campeonato Paraense (vice-campeão), sua conquista de Brasileirão D e progresso inesperado na Copa do Brasil, deveria ter provocado um sabor amargo em Belém.

O segundo preguiço vem da CBF, que sempre programa as partidas de volta no estádio do time maior, onde só precisam de empate para passar. Essa situação favorece os grandes times de sul.

O terceiro tipo de discriminação é no futebol mesmo, onde o pito de juiz dirige tudo. Vemos na Copa de 2002 que Itália e Espanha foram eliminados de uma maneira exageradamente preguiçosa quando jogavam contra Coréia do Sul. Os Coreanos sobreviveram com pênaltis fracos, cartões vermelhos inventados, e foram deixados atuar numa maneira violenta em campo. O juiz em campo pode mandar tudo passar, ou não, como foi o caso de segundo gol de São Raimundo. Anular-o porque? Porque não dá por um time pequeno, de Serie C, do interior do interior, ganhar uma disputa contra o poderoso e histórico Botafogo, com seu estádio novo, com os seus dirigentes almoçando com os da CBF em Barra de Tijuca? O porque se o resultado tivesse sido 4-4, o juiz não queira trabalhar uma meia hora mais pelas cobranças dos pênaltis?

De qualquer jeito, esse comentarista tem um novo time de coração, apesar de que é impossível encontrar uma camisa oficial em Santarém.

Big Football Sunday in Rio de Janeiro

This is the most important weekend of football in Rio de Janeiro in many, many years.

Rio de Janeiro has many dozens of professional teams, but four major clubs: Botafogo, Fluminese, Flamengo and Vasco da Gama. This is the final weekend of the Campeonato Brasileiro Serie A, or Brasileirão.

Botafogo is in the relegation zone, playing at home against Palmeiras (São Paulo). If Botafogo wins, they escape relegation. If they lose, they go down to the second division for the second time in five years. In addition to being the team with the most draws (14) they are widely perceived to be the team most harmed by bad luck, poor referring, and general levels of incompetence on the part of club management (despite receiving a massive subsidy from the city for their stadium contract). Palmeiras is three points off the title chase and win might give them the title if other results go their way. They will come with everything they have especially since they were leading the competition by six points six weeks ago, have spent hundreds of millions on transfers, and have very little to show for it.

Three months ago, the odds of Fluminese falling to the second division were 97%. Since the return of their talismanic striker Fred, they have won ten league games on the trot while getting to the final of the Copa SulAmericana. Flu sit one point ahead of both Coritiba and Botafogo and a draw will be enough to keep them in the Brasilieirão. Fluminese plays Coritba for the right to stay in the first division. After losing a heartbreaking final to LDU of Ecuador on Wednesday night they might not have the spirit to stay afloat. If they fall, Rio’s oldest club might not return to the first division for some time.

15	Fluminense	45	37	11	12	14	48	55	-7
16	Coritiba	44	37	12	8	17	47	59	-12
17	Botafogo	44	37	10	14	13	50	57	-7
18	Santo André	41	37	11	8	18	45	57	-12
19	Náutico	38	37	10	8	19	48	70	-22
20	Sport	31	37	7	10	20	48	67	-19

Flamengo are the unlikely story of the 2009 season. In August, they sat in 12^th place with not much hope of reaching a continental competition. Since the inclusion of the 37 year old Dejan Petkovic in the starting lineup, week in week out, Flamengo have been the best team in Brazil. Petkovic has been brilliant, combining with ‘O Imperiador’ Adriano and Ze Roberto for some memorable goals. Flamengo idol turned manager Andrade has pulled all the right strings and is about to bring a massive party to the Maracanã.

Flamengo is in first place by two points chased by Internacional of Porto Alegre, Palmeiras and São Paulo. If Inter win and Flamengo lose, Inter will be champion. Problem for Inter: Flamengo is playing Grêmio of Porto Alegre, their arch-rival. Last week the fans of Grêmio began to chant ‘entrega’ to their team, meaning: lose the game intentionally, giving the title to Flamengo so Inter won’t win. It appears that this is going to happen and that a Flamenguista title is a fait accompli.

P	Equipes	PTS	J	V	E	D	GP	GC	S
1	Flamengo	64	37	18	10	9	56	43	13
2	Internacional	62	37	18	8	11	61	43	18
3	Palmeiras	62	37	17	11	9	57	43	14
4	São Paulo	62	37	17	11	9	53	42	11

Rio’s soccer fans have not had much to cheer about in recent years. In recent years, Fluminese fell as far as the third division, Botafogo was relegated in 2004, and Vasco was relegated in 2008. Flamengo, with the largest fan base in Brazil (if not the world) is disputing the title for the first time in 17 years. A Rio team has never won the championship in the era of pontas corridas (running table of points). This in itself speaks volumes about the management of football in this city.

The seasons of Flu and Fogo will be a success if they aren’t relegated. Vasco was champion of the second division and will be retuning to top flight football in 2010. Flamengo is probably going to waltz into the championship because Gremio is going to abria as pernas (as they say) so that their cross-town rivals have no chance at the title. One victory, two escapes?

It’s going to be a big futebol Sunday in Rio.