With the World Cup on the horizon and the Serie A season kicking off this weekend, fans of Brazilian clubs should be licking their lips at the footballing delights to come. But with attendance absurdly low and the national scene mired in conflict, the reality is quite different.
By James Young
Legal disputes threaten to paralyse Serie A of the Brasileirão, mirroring similar recent stoppages in the lower divisions. An average top flight attendance of 14,000 – on par with the Australian A-League and well below attendance in the football-averse United States. Major clubs riddled by enormous debts and frequently unable to pay player salaries. A calendar that forces top teams to play around 80 games and spend five months of the year competing in state championships against tiny local clubs. Rising ticket prices that make games inaccessible to ordinary fans. The threat of torcida organizada (hooligan gang) violence.
At a time when the domestic game should be basking in the World Cup sunshine, why is Brazilian football in such a shoddy state?
“Of course I hope Brazil win the World Cup,” World Cup 1970 winner and Folha columnist Tostão said recently, “even though it might have negative consequences for Brazilian football, which needs to organise itself on and off the pitch. Winning the World Cup could set back the rebuilding of Brazilian football.”
Tostão is not alone in his concerns.
“We play games at ten o’clock at night,” said Coritiba midfielder and former Fenerbahce legend Alex last year, referring to midweek kick-off times that are dictated by the novela (soap opera) schedule of the giant Globo TV network. “I have to spend the entire day in a hotel waiting for the game…and imagine what it’s like for the fans? They have to leave home or work, go to the stadium to watch the game, get home afterwards, then wake up at 7am the next day…it’s inhumane. That’s why the stadiums are empty.”
Expensive ticket prices do not help. According to a study last year by sports marketing agency Pluri Consultants, if the average-earning UK fan was to spend his annual salary on football, he could afford 911 tickets for the Premier League, one of the world’s most expensive divisions. If his Brazilian counterpart did the same with his hard-earned cash, he could buy tickets for only 645 Serie A games.
Since the country’s new World Cup stadiums have opened, already steep prices have climbed even higher. While higher tariffs are to be expected in plush new venues, the cheapest full price ticket for last season’s Vasco da Gama v Corinthians mid-table fixture in Brasilia’s Mané Garrincha stadium was an eye-watering R$160 – only R$10 less than it will cost to watch a World Cup quarter-final.
Violence also plays a part. There have been 234 football related deaths in Brazilian football since 1988, with 30 coming in 2013, when the season ended with Atlético-PR and Vasco da Gama fans fighting a pitched battle on the terraces of the Arena Joinville in Santa Catarina and the police nowhere to be seen. And the security worries have continued this year with the violent invasion of the Corinthians training ground by fans angry at their team’s poor form.
Yet little is being done to address these problems. One of the reasons for this is that the power in Brazilian football lies not with the clubs but with the CBF (the Brazilian FA) and the 27 state football federations, organisations steeped in vested interests – which is why the state championships, despite generally attracting tiny crowds, are unlikely to disappear any time soon.
And Brazilian clubs continue to lurch from one financial crisis to the next – Libertadores champions Atletico Mineiro recently paid their players late after the government withheld transfer monies to pay off some of the club’s enormous outstanding tax debt. Meanwhile the CBF grows fat milking the cash cow of the Brazilian national team – the organisation brought in R$360 million in 2012.
It is no wonder that in the midst of this chaos a player protest group, Bom Senso FC (“Common Sense FC”) has emerged, demanding greater financial responsibility on the part of clubs and an improved fixture calendar.
The CBF’s inability to put its house in order is demonstrated by the debacle surrounding relegation from last year’s top flight. After a points deduction condemned them to the drop, instead of powerful Rio de Janeiro outfit Fluminense, the little Portuguesa club from São Paulo recently spent months battling the decision in the courts. Injunctions, rather than goals, have made the headlines, and the possibility of a 21, or even a 24 team top flight was put forward. And this week Icasa, who finished just outside the Serie B promotion spots last year, joined in the fun by obtaining a court order guaranteeing its place in Serie A after a rival team reportedly fielded an ineligible player. Both cases merely add to the long list of recent situations where clubs have challenged CBF decisions in the common law courts.
Presiding over this omnishambles is CBF president Jose Maria Marin, a man who has achieved the remarkable feat of seeming even sleazier than predecessor Ricardo Teixeira, currently enjoying a life of gilded exile in Miami after a string of corruption scandals. It explains why someone like Tostão is in two minds about cheering for Brazil this summer.
“If Brazil win,” he says, “we’ll have to put up with Marin saying how everything is perfect and how Brazil is the country of football.”
The decrepit state of the domestic game faces a further threat – the slickly packaged extravaganzas of the UEFA Champions League and the top European championships. Last week Brazil’s two biggest TV channels showed the Atletico Madrid v Barcelona Champions League tie live, even though the game was played during the working day. Although not every fan could spare the time to stop for a drink, the pavements outside bars were packed with onlookers lingering in front of the TV for just a few moments more, anxious to see the world’s best players perform in packed stadiums.
Last week respected Folha columnist Paulo Vinicius Coelho exhorted fans to kick back and enjoy the Champions League games on TV. “You’re a citizen of the world,” he cried. “It’s Brazilian football that isn’t!”
