Football by Dance -- No more

Samba  sadness

(Decline of Latin America`s football)

Mano Menezes the latest football coach for Brazil has advised that people should keep calm, after Brazil was eliminated last week from Copa America, 2011 by losing to Paraguay in the quarter-finals. This advice has been occasioned by the manner of Brazil`s defeat. After a ragged and uncoordinated play for 90 minutes and 30 minutes extra-time, Brazil shot all its 4 penalty-kicks outside the goalposts – the 5^th was not necessary because Paraguay had already won the match. It is a matter for Guiness Book of Records perhaps. Last year Brazil had been eliminated from the World Cup, 2010 in the quarter-finals, as it was in the World Cup, 2006 too. Dunga was the coach then.

This is a worrisome thing, not only for Brazil but for all devotees of football.

Reams have been written on the decline of Brazilian football and more is being written still. I too add my small bit.

In the entire 20^th century Brazilian football – dubbed as Samba Football , not very aptly in my opinion – has been the shining south pole to the equally shining north pole of European ( quintessentially, German) football. Much mystical thought has been lavished on this exquisite antipodean pairing. I just jot down here the prominent salients:

a) European football is white, Brazilian is coloured

b) One is corporate and mechanical, the other is individual and artistic

c)  One is classical, the other is rock/reggae

d) One is upper class, the other is plebian

and so on.

While these polarities do capture some substance the truth is less simple, as usual.

The game of football is historically and sociologically plebian. This is expressed in the historically given name itself – a game played by “foot” people, as opposed to games by riders of horses,  as medieval kingdoms understood it. A game encouraged by the nobility of Europe and Asia (China, Japan) to keep the plebian passions corralled then, and so also now. 

Short duration, team/pack spirit, leaderlessness, contest involving brutal strength, agility, and artfulness in equal measure, the ball carrying connotations of a severed head, and deep rootedness and a sort of organic dependence  in  partisan spectators, football is an updated gladiatorial blood- sport. The game came into maturity when it was caught up in the turmoil of medieval Europe’s warring city states – the remnants of which are today’s city football clubs of Rome, London, Madrid, Milan, Amsterdam who now play to win the UEFA Champions League. In a real sense football remains essentially a club-based urban game, and its national level versions, highlighted in the World Cup, remain somewhat synthetic and relatively less impassioned.

Originating in feudal kingdoms the game underwent a sea change during the 19^th-20^th century capitalism. It became a profession par excellence. Beckham as an icon is as good as Tom Hanks if not better and Pele goes beyond the pale -- equal to Superman/Batman, if not better. Modern football is one of the finest flowers of capitalism -- open, free, lawful, competitive, talent- based and privilege-free, if not the finest. Today it is also mega-business and involves humungous investments of money, players being bought and sold for millions of dollars among club teams. It is played for super profits, and yet remains essentially unrigged and free -- when most of the capitalist global economy has become monopolistically rigged and neo-medievally controlled. A similar brilliant transformation is taking place in world-cricket by the genie uncorked by the capitalist mode of the Indian Premier League.

It is interesting that communist collectivist societies of Russia, China, Cuba etc produced finest athletes who have to be essentially individualistic, but did not produce good collective or team games like football, hockey, cricket. Why? Tricky dialectic, this – the key will be found in the absence of historical experience of deep city-communities and therefore club-spirit in these societies. 

Connected with this is another side to capitalism which is mentioned less by the firangis i.e. colonialism. Capitalism would have remained a provincial European enterprise if it did not have imperialistic colonialism to raise it to a global phenomenon. As in most other spheres, European football today is dominated by players imported from its former colonies. The national team of France for instance in the World Cup 2010 had 9 or 10 non-white players, depending on how to classify Zidane. African and East European players routinely dominate in all big football clubs of European nations. Federation of International football Association (FIFA), the paramount guild-body for global football is currently trying to half heartedly enforce a rule that no club can have more than four “imported” players. Some clubs are trying to evade this rule by resorting to giving questionable citizenship to imported players. Empire is now coming home to roost, like Indian doctors in UK/USA hospitals. 

And this brings us back to Brazil. Its sadness is representative of the whole sad Latin American football today. It is often said by the pundits that capitalism is destroying football out there; best players of Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay ,etc spend most of their lives playing foe European clubs. The truth is less pure.

It is not that Latin-American football has too much capitalism; it is that it has too little. Just like its economy Latin-American football too has become hijacked and subordinated by global capitalism because its indigenous capitalism has been much weaker. It too has football clubs like Europe, usually set up by its ex-colonial masters, and it has Copa America to rival UEFA Champions League; till recently it had a distinct (samba) style of playing -- although only Brazil was holding out till recently while Argentina had frankly adopted the flat European style since Maradona ; and it has the best players of the game. Yet all this is not enough, its football is not sustainable by its economics. By the onset of 21^st century most of its valuable produce – forests, fruits, football -- have become alienated and earmarked for cities, shelves, stadiums of Europe. No wonder Copa America has ceased to fascinate and inspire. Tellingly, major sports tv-networks like Star/ESPN/Ten Sports ignore it altogether. Dungas and Menezes’ can still give battle, but it will be in vain. Alas.

Lately most of Latin America is politically turning from right-wing dictatorships of the 1970s and 80s to some type of left-wing capitalism ( like Nehru`s and Indira Gandhi`s in India ). Can this reverse the decline of football? One can hope and wish, if only for the sake of sporting bio-diversity. But it seems unlikely. If you don’t catch capitalism in time, you can never quite catch up.