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Becoming Brazilian: The Making of National Identity through

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Article  in  The International Journal of Sport and Society · January 2017

DOI: 10.18848/2152-7857/CGP/v08i02/37-49

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 VOLUME 8 ISSUE 2

The International Journal of

Sport and Society

_________________________________________________________________________

Becoming Brazilian
The Making of National Identity through Football

FELIPE TOBAR AND LUANA GUSSO

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 Becoming Brazilian: The Making of
National Identity through Football
Felipe Tobar,1 Univille University, Brazil
Luana Gusso, Univille University, Brazil

Abstract: Football started to play an important role in Brazilian society in the early 1900s, being considered a metaphor
par excellence for life in society. At first dominated by a powerful elite that wanted to copy modern European standards,
football eventually became popular with the general public. Despite conflicts, it became common ground, consequently
becoming a key factor in the nation-building process exploited by the Brazilian government. Analyzing the first half of the
twentieth century, this article discusses the role of football as a crucial instrument for forging Brazilian national identity
from four points of view. First, this article will focus on the social class system, which was used to segregate the
population. Second, the focus will be on the issue of race and the fact that Brazilian society was still heavily influenced by
slave culture. Then, the focus will be on the crucial debate about different spaces and cultures, more specifically, the idea
of creating a “national unity” around the national team after the emergence of a regional rivalry between Brazil and
Argentina. The fourth focus will be on the government of former President Getúlio Vargas (1930–45), who led a process
that officialized football as part of Brazilian culture and made it a symbol of patriotism and civic duty. In conclusion, this
article problematizes how the role of football in shaping Brazilian national identity has evolved in more recent times and
its influence after the 2014 World Cup and the disclosure of corruption cases involving football officials in 2015. Finally,
we list public and private actions in order to prevent what could mean the “decline of the idea of Brazil as country of
football.”

Keywords: National Identity, Football, Brazil

Introduction

I n order to understand the history and development of football in Brazil, it is necessary to

study different sociocultural aspects of Brazilian society in the first half of the twentieth
century. As it happened in other countries, the transformations that took place within
Brazilian sports—with rowing being the main sport until the arrival of football—are directly
inserted in the social amalgam that occurred in the period. Football is like a book that contains all
the features of Brazilian society, both positive and negative (Murad 2006). The social process
that shapes our individual and collective identities is also heavily influenced by a broader range
of issues relating to race/ethnicity, social class, gender, sexuality, and religion (Parker and
Manley 2016).
In the case of Brazil, issues such as social exclusion based on economics, indirect racism in
the form of sports rules that maintained whites-only teams and spectators, and the rivalry
between the Brazilian and Argentinean national teams were part of this social process. Another
factor we will analyze is state interference in football, which changed an industry that had been
exclusively managed by the private sector. This article aims to provide a foundation to
understand how Brazilian national identity has been constructed through football and how
Brazilian people feel about football being one of their national symbols. With the support of
theorists such as Pierre Bourdieu, Stuart Hall, Haney Lopez, Frank Lechner, and other important
authors, as well as newspapers, articles, laws and regulations of federations and confederations,
and public research, we will show that this process was not easy, having been influenced by
radically different political interests and the uncontrollable passion the masses felt for football.

1
Corresponding Author: Felipe Tobar, Rua Paulo Malschitzk, 10—Zona Industrial Norte, Department of Cultural
Heritage and Society, Univille University, Joinville, Santa Catarina, 89219-710, Brazil. email: felipetobar@univille.net

The International Journal of Sport and Society

Volume 8, Issue 2, 2017, www.sportinsociety.com
© Common Ground Research Networks, Felipe Tobar,
Luana Gusso, All Rights Reserved
Permissions: support@cgnetworks.org
ISSN: 2152-7857 (Print)
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY

The Origin of Football in Brazil

The history of football cannot be separated from geography. Just as the worldwide spread of
football’s popularity followed the growth of the British Empire as a world power in the late
nineteenth and early twentieth centuries, the construction of Brazilian national identity around
football was also the result of a long and painful process that has become a kind of identity myth.
In Brazil, at the end of the nineteenth century, football arrived as a symbol of a persecuted
modernity, a hobby for a few, namely, the white elite, upper-middle-class and urban, exclusive,
and equally guided by prejudice. However, it did not take long for football to draw the attention
of the lower classes, which included former slaves and manumitted slaves, who “played”
capoeira, criminalized in 1890 (Da Silva 2006). Football in Brazil was, at first, only viewed as a
physical activity devoid of competition—a game for the school curriculum. Later, it became a
regulated sport. At that point, the first football clubs in Brazil developed and popular interest
skyrocketed. Football researchers have differing opinions about who deserves credit for
importing the new sport into Brazil, so it is possible to say that Brazil has had two births of
football.
From 1878 to 1881, after trying out football in Europe, mainly in France, Jesuit priests
imported the practice called “street football” to their schools as moral and physical development
tools for the youth (Neto 2002). However, in 1894 football changed significantly as a result of
new rules brought by the Englishman Charles Miller, considered by most researchers the “father
of Brazilian football.” He holds this title because he was the first to practice football in a social
club, and because he was the one who brought the rules of the game we now know as football. In
the decades that followed, national interest in football grew both on and off the field, to the
extent that Brazil achieved lasting international recognition as “the country of football.”
However, it is noteworthy that, just as it occurred within British society, Brazilian football was
initially played solely by the ruling class. As the social historian Hilario Júnior (2007, 34)
explains: “At least in the following ten years, football continued to be an elite English game: the
players were, overwhelmingly, industrial technicians and engineers. They only spoke of field,
full-back, inside-right, referee, linesman and so on. Until 1930, if a player got hurt the one who
committed the foul would only apologize in English: I’m sorry. The football brought by Charles
Miller was not even the English national sport. This honor belonged to cricket.”
The situation slowly changed, following large, public attendance of games at stadiums—
with some fans often climbing on trees and walls so they would not miss a single second of the
match. The founding of popular clubs increased the popularization process and made football a
daily habit in the lives of the masses. Vasco da Gama (1898) featured a roster that included
black, mulatto, and impoverished players, while Sport Club Corinthians Paulista (1910) was
founded by the public. At the same time, amateur football fields were common sights on the
outskirts of cities (Da Silva 2006).
It is important to highlight the appropriation of football by the poor. A widely held
assumption that superiors or British workers imposed the sport on poor Brazilians is untrue.
Rather, the poor claimed football as a way to overcome the frustrations of everyday life. In fact,
the former journalist Mário Filho ascribe the modification of style, or better, the emergence of
the Brazilian style of playing, to the participation of the popular classes, especially African-
Brazilians. The rupture that started to take place can be explained through the reaction of the
dominated in both society and on the football field. Bourdieu (2004, 216) writes, “It certainly lies
in the reaction of the rookies, and the provisions incorporated socially that they introduce into the
field, against the complex socially marked that a sport is, or a philosophical work, as an
objectified program of practice, but socially carried on, embodied in the social characteristics of
these agents, by the effect of appropriation.”
Soon, the transformation of football revealed the social problems related to the ruling classes
and the economic power of Brazilian society. Brazilians sought a common identity, not yet
represented in any social phenomenon, that would break down economic, racial, and social
barriers. Until then, the exaltation of African cultural symbols, such as candomblé and umbanda,

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 TOBAR AND GUSSO: BECOMING BRAZILIAN

had not produced the effect intended by thinkers of the time, because they did not carry an ideal
of modernity (Goldblatt 2014). Football, a typical European product and the apple of the
Brazilian aristocracy’s eye, was later chosen to be, alongside samba, the main symbol of a
national union. This occurred as a State-run process—particularly under President Getúlio
Vargas—and gradually developed over the first half of the twentieth century by overcoming four
central problems, which we will discuss below.

The Social Barriers of Football in the First Half of the Twentieth Century:
Economic Power and Race
To begin, it is necessary to point out that the first two issues—class and race—went hand-in-
hand in the arduous solidification process of football as a global sport. Football belongs to all
classes and colors of the Brazilian population. Henceforth, the concept of “class” shall be
interpreted as a definer of the economic aspects which will be used to distinguish the groups (Da
Silva 2006). For example, the journalist Mário Filho represents football in Rio de Janeiro in its
first decade as a rigorous caste society, in which the walls built between the elite and the lower
classes were nearly insurmountable. Filho (2003, 36) writes, “For somebody to join the club
Fluminense, for instance, he had to come, undoubtedly, from a good family. Otherwise he would
be left out, just like the boys from Retiro da Guanabara, a famous part of the city known as a
famous stronghold of rascals and troublemakers.”
At the same time, it is necessary to emphasize that the concept of race discussed in this
article dates to a period in Brazilian society that was not far removed from the slave period,
which stigmatized “colored people” such as blacks and mulattoes. Today, we know that race is
socially constructed and that a single “race gene” that can be specified as a basis for biological
distinction does not exist (Smith and Hattery 2016). Race is discursive rather than biological.
That is, it is the organizing category of some communication styles and systems of social
practices which use a flexible frame, often not very specific, of differences in terms of physical
characteristics—skin color, hair texture, body, and physical characteristics, etc.—as symbolic
marks in order to differentiate socially one group from another (Hall 2005). Thus, the dominant
society constructs its stereotypes in a way that best suits the maintenance of their dominance.
The legal scholar Lopez (2000, 167) also identifies the abstract construction of race that
permeated Brazilian society, writing, “I understand race as a mutable social construction that has
been used historically to classify and stratify people based on clusters of physical characteristics.
Race is defined by and against whiteness, an unmarked, invisible, and unexamined category that
strategically has a touchstone quality of the normal, against which members of marked categories
are defined, so that all members of marked categories possess race in ways whites do not.” In
other words, the idea was that football had been imported as a new item of European modernity
and, as such, it should be played only by people of the same social and racial status; that is, white
people. “Whiteness” has been defined by McDonald (2009, quoted in Cleland 2016, 64) as
“institutionalised discourses and practices seeking exclusionary social, cultural, economic and
psychic advantage for those bodies racially marked as white.” On August 6, 1915, Jornal dos
Sports Sports Director Alberto Silvares (1915, 6) broadcast this discourse in Rio de Janeiro,
writing, “Football is a sport that can be practiced by people of the same education and culture. [If
we] are forced to play with a worker [...] the practice of the sport becomes a torment, a sacrifice,
anything but fun.”
In 1916, former diplomat Rui Barbosa referred to the players that would play in the South
American Championship in Argentina, with the brown-skinned Friendenreich in the starting
lineup, as a bunch of troublemakers and slackers. Such criticism, in itself, shows that football
was becoming the most widespread sport in Brazil in all social classes. As a way to curb the
ascension of the lower classes—mostly blacks—in the Brazilian football universe, club directors,
and, in particular, State federations run by upper-class white men, intensified their discriminatory
actions. Inside this structural resistance, segregation was the rule. Club owners created or
strengthened internal rules to prevent, sometimes subtly, other times clearly, the participation of
39
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY

laborers—obviously aimed at factory workers—and people of color. It also aimed to prevent the
professionalism of the sport, as the players had professions and did not receive any compensation
to play. Owners believed that these rules would prevent the entry of the unwanted, avoiding what
was coined “Brown Amateurism” (Napoleão 2006).
In 1907, Bangu Athletico Club made history when it withdrew from the State Championship
after being denied the right to employ Francisco Carregal, a black player. To reinforce this
decision, the federation created a rule that banned players of color from participating. The ruling
was published in the newspaper Gazeta dos Sports on May 18, in an article that expressed
dissatisfaction with the attitude of the federation against men of color: “To whom it might
concern, in a session today, the league board has unanimously decided by voting forbidding the
registration of players of color. For suitability purposes it has been deliberated that all the
affiliated clubs shall follow this guideline, so it can become known accordingly so they can
proceed properly. Yours respectfully” (quoted in Dos Santos 2006, 41). Despite popular outcry
and criticism, a decade later the situation had experienced only minor changes. In 1924, the Rio
de Janeiro State Championship Statute, run by the Associação Metropolitana de Esportes
Athléticos (AMEA), made it possible for laborers to play. It was obvious that the ban included
black players as well. Chapter nine of the Association Statute stated:

Regarding the enrollment of amateur players, its formalities and requirements:

Art. 64. The members of affiliated clubs can be enrolled, who, without the intent of
profiting, practice the sports overseen by AMEA.
Art. 65. However, enrollment is forbidden:
[…]
2—to those who make their livelihood by the means of any manual labor, which
encompasses mainly the use of physical strength;
[…]
6—to those who are not recognized as amateurs by the highest football authority in
Brazil;
7—to those who cannot write and read correctly;
[…]
9—to those without a profession or a steady job;
10—to blue-collar workers, such as assistants, janitors, shoe-polishers and drivers;
11—to workers whose jobs require, allow or facilitate tips (Associação Metropolitana
de Esportes Athléticos 1924).

Such rules directly affected the Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama, which had won the State
Championship the previous year. In response, its president, Jose Augusto Prestes, cancelled the
club’s membership and kept the twelve players who were prohibited from competing in the State
Championship. In turn, the president of the AMEA Organizing Committee, Arnaldo Guinle,
expressed the racist and anti-ethnic rhetoric that was typical of the time, calling forth efforts by
Vasco da Gama to set up teams that were genuinely Portuguese, so as to demonstrate in the sport
“the real qualities of the aforementioned secular race” (Dos Santos 2006, 51).
That is but one case of football managers of the time enacting conservative strategies to
benefit whites over blacks. From birth to death the racial or ethnic classification of the individual
has direct impacts upon his or her station in life (Smith 2014). In this sense, it is worthwhile to
recall the concept of habitus developed by Bourdieu, quoted by Dixon (2016, 54): “Bourdieu’s
concept of habitus has also been used to draw attention to racial inequality in football and
football fandom cultures. In this context, the term ‘racial inequality’ is used to reflect imbalances
in the distribution of power and opportunities as they are specifically related to racial groups.
Furthermore, ‘racial habitus’ refers to thought process (often unconscious, but derived from a
history of widely held discriminatory thoughts and practices) that regulates feelings, perceptions
and views on matters of race and race inequality.” Yet, because of the high quality of those
players, who were crucial for the victories of their teams and for the national team as well, those

40
 TOBAR AND GUSSO: BECOMING BRAZILIAN

rules would eventually be changed. Friedenreich, a player of color, was the best example, as he
was only allowed to play because his father was white and European. He scored the Copa
America title goal in 1923, and a week later his boots were showcased in a jewelry store in
downtown Rio de Janeiro so that people could admire them (Guterman 2010).
At the same time, prejudice was also losing its grip on fans. Sports—football, more
specifically—served as a stage to highlight the solution, or at least to discuss social issues. These
discussions occurred slowly, as fans were overcome by the passion that football stirs and the
reflections it generates. Loyalty to one’s favorite team became more important than one’s
personal prejudices. Soon, the intellectuals of the time (artists, writers, and journalists), with
State support, started to highlight the differences, which had previously been regarded as
detrimental to the development of the Brazilian people. Dos Santos (2006, 36) writes, “Even
though football was still being practiced under the English format, little by little it started to
develop unique characteristics to Brazilian football, which are still emblematic. The swing and
the trickery, hereafter so sublimated by commentators and football lovers, were directly
associated with the uprising of black people into the sport, corroborating the view that such
aptitudes are supposed to be genuinely Brazilian.”
Many clashes took place between rich and poor, and blacks and whites, both on and off the
field, until the sport became one of the main symbols of Brazilian miscegenation. The matters
went beyond the sporting arena, and it is in this sense that football has turned into a defining
aspect of local cultures, as well as of a national identity (Dos Santos 2006). Brazil still needed
football to give a natural feeling to the process of accepting blacks and the poor as players and
spectators—a process in which the spectators exalted and appreciated the players, transforming
football into an activity which generated pride in the nation and served as a symbol of national
identity. Such “imagined unity” between whites and blacks, and the rich and the poor, would
eventually become reality under the colors of the national team uniform, after Brazil overcame a
strong rivalry between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro regarding the lineup of the national team
and the professionalization of amateur athletes.

The Strong Rivalry between Brazil and Argentina and Internal Issues
between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro
Equally important to any discussion of identity construction are issues of affiliation and
attachment. Regarding the formation of the self, for example, we must consider how and why
people identify themselves in relation to those around them. Where wider processes of
interaction are concerned, we must recognize that identity is not only about the self, but also
about how we construct ourselves in accordance with broader social processes through
communication and negotiation. Together, all of these elements comprise the basis of identity
formation (Parker and Manley 2016). Football, a sport that can be appropriated and used for
many reasons, began to be transformed into an element that encompassed a set of regional,
professional, and religious self-images and, as a result, became a catalyst of national identity.
Unlike other catalysts of national identity, football needed to be mediated due to the intense
passion it elicited from Brazilians. In a sense, the mediation could only be achieved through
defeating the “other,” as a counterpoint to overcome. Defeating another country would serve as
the affirmation of collective national victory (Agostino 2006).
Since the early, friendly matches against highly regarded British teams that toured Brazil, it
was clear that the development of national identity through football could not achieve its highest
expression via single victories against the British, who had brought organized football to Brazil.
Defeating regional neighbors was a different matter—a tangible reference of national affirmation
because they were seen as rivals fighting for the same ground as Brazil, the South American
nation with European values. In 1920, the Brazilian national team visited Buenos Aires on the
way home from Chile, where it had played the fourth edition of the South American
Championship. During the visit a local newspaper made a series of provocations directed at the

41
THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY

Brazilian lineup, using the expression “macaquitos” (monkeys), which generated an immediate
reaction in the Brazilian press (Agostino 2006).
In response, Brazilian authorities requested that the newspaper retract the stories. The
Argentinean ministers quickly took a stand by reprimanding the newspaper and making sure the
relationship between the countries would remain unaffected. The Brazilian government took such
strong offense to the story because it thought that the new image of Brazilian society had been
established and that doubts regarding slavery, miscegenation, and eugenics—which were then
commonplace—had been left behind. In that regard, the Brazilian people took personally the
newspaper’s racist insults against its national team. The insults were considered very offensive
by the Brazilian management, and they were worried that the insults might lead to international
repercussions, especially in Europe.
In 1921, when the team from São Paulo—featuring the black player Friedenreich—went on
a tour through the white countries, an incident showed that the rivalry had escalated between the
two squads. The incidents had already taken on a life of their own, going beyond provocations in
newspapers and government discourse. After the Brazilian team, unbelievably, defeated the
Argentinean national team 1–0, Argentinean fans burned Brazilian flags. According to reports,
Friedenreich could not stand it, ran toward the fans, and put out the fire with his jersey, thus
partially saving the flag from total destruction (Agostino 2006). Commentators viewed the
episode as patriotism theft that reinforced not only the feeling that Argentina was Brazil’s biggest
rival, but also the necessity of uniting the Brazilian nation to face future difficulties. In turn,
some fundamental questions eventually arose regarding the Brazilian squad. It became clear that
the rivalry was not simply between blacks and whites; it was also between players from São
Paulo and Rio de Janeiro.
In 1930, the upcoming World Cup in Uruguay brought to light the problems between both
states. The São Paulo Athletic Sports Federation (APEA) wanted to manage the Brazilian
national team and decided to sue the Rio de Janeiro-based Brazilian Confederation of Sports
(CBD), which was in charge of the team. After Brazil’s disastrous defeat in Uruguay, the fans
from São Paulo celebrated the downfall of the managers from Rio de Janeiro. São Paulo hosted a
parade with a cardboard coffin representing the death of CBD and threw it under the famous
Viaduto do Chá bridge (Agostino 2006). After Brazil’s second defeat in the World Cup, which
eliminated the country from the tournament, the directors from São Paulo and Rio pointed
fingers, with one insinuating that the other had betrayed the nation in a crucial moment for
Brazilian football. What actually occurred was that São Paulo did not feel represented on the
national team and placed the blame on Rio, underscoring the dire need to overcome their rivalry
to construct a united national identity.
In 1936, Luis Aranha became president of CBD. He was a politician who was not part of the
sports world, but had the trust of President Getulio Vargas. His objective was to put an end to the
animosity between the Federations of Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, which complained not only
about Brazil’s lineup, but also about the newly arrived professionalization of football, which
would replace the amateurism the directors from São Paulo favored (Sarmento 2006). Although
it would take two years for the complete formalization of this model, its initiation allowed CBD
to make new plans regarding the national team for the upcoming South American Cup of 1936–
37. That tournament would take place in Argentina, where the national team would once more
hear fans shouting “macaquitos,” which evoked a feeling of national identity on the field.
In this respect, it is important to note that the media had long influenced the process of
identity construction through football, by helping to overcome the issues between São Paulo and
Rio de Janeiro as well as advocating for a unique style of football that would serve as a form of
identity for the Brazilians. The construction of idols, real symbols of “Brazilianism,” and
national heroes helped to spread this common admiration (Da Silva 2006). The deep influence
that football had in Brazil could be observed in many ways in those years, in areas such as art,
literary criticism, academia, and folk music, and Brazilians began to disseminate stories of glory
and mystery, attracting the attention of everyone from blue-collar workers to intellectuals and
merchants.

42
 TOBAR AND GUSSO: BECOMING BRAZILIAN

The euphoria caused by Brazil’s great performance in the 1938 World Cup consolidated the
symbolic association between São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro. Gilberto Freyre (1945, 432) wrote
that one of the triumphs of the Brazilian national team was its miscegenation, which gave it a
unique style of playing the game:

Our style of playing football, in my opinion, differs from the European style in a series
of surprising qualities, such as trickery, feinting and agility, complemented by the
brightness and individual spontaneity. [...] Our passes, our dummies, our flourishes with
the ball, there’s something from the dance and capoeira with the Brazilian style of
playing which makes the game invented by the English smoother and spicier rather than
the typical mechanized European style. More interestingly to sociologists, this situation
seemed to express the flamboyant mulatto style and at the same time the trickery which
characterizes the real Brazil to this day.

Football was universally recognized by authorities as an efficient way to mobilize the

masses, and the national team was the main ingredient in the representation of nationality. The
events that took place after the semifinal match against Italy made it clear that the government
had to regulate football in Brazil. Brazil lost the match when Italian player Giuseppe Meazza
scored a penalty kick, enraging the Brazilian people. Having been allowed to take the day off
from work, football fans crowded the squares to listen to the radio broadcast. Anger slowly gave
way to hope when it was announced that the match would be annulled (Agostino 2006). The
news, to the despair of many Brazilians, was just a hoax. Even Getúlio Vargas, former Brazilian
President, watched the Cup and was taken by surprise with the widespread reaction that followed
the loss to the Italians. The Brazilian people were filled with disappointment and sadness, as if a
catastrophic event had befallen the nation (Costa 2006). Back in Brazil, thousands of people
welcomed the national team’s return. Businesses closed their doors for an open car parade,
saluting the players as national heroes. After the World Cup, the government realized the
importance of controlling football more tightly. It was, thereafter, the government’s opinion that
football should be regulated, in an effort to manage the general public’s strong response to the
game. Getúlio Vargas made this decision and determined the legal status that football would
assume.

The Officialization of Football as Part of Brazilian Culture and as a Symbol

of Patriotism and Civic Duty
From the beginning of his interim government in 1930, Vargas saw football as an important
instrument, a way to mold Brazilians’ perceptions about themselves in order to build the
symbolism of a united nation. In his journal, Vargas (quoted in Lyra Filho 1983, 128) wrote: “I
understand that sports, especially football, play an important role in social control. The sporting
passion has the miraculous power of conciliating integralists and communists or, at least, to
temporarily downplay their ideological incompatibilities. [...] It is necessary to coordinate and
discipline these forces which strengthen the unity of national conscience.” Planning to
disseminate football alongside these values, the uniquely witty Vargas defined samba and
football as the core elements for the new definition of a national identity. Costa (2006, 108)
explains:

Samba, born in the shantytowns, started getting popular with the rich. Football, which
had started as a rich man’s sport, became the biggest passion of the poor. They were,
however, the very definition of what it meant being Brazilian. For the new government,
the construction of a nation and its nationality was a pressing priority that justified the
interference of the government. To Vargas, the construction of a great Brazilian nation
should be the civic duty of everybody. In this sense, football came to be the fundamental

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piece in the construction of the Brazilian Nationality. The nationalist feeling is an

intrinsic fact in sport and the new government sees in it a powerful ally.

Expressions such as “civism,” “homeland,” “patriotism,” “nation,” and “nationalism” were

frequently used in the official speeches of the day. It is with this association between sport and
the state that football became a centerpiece of government propaganda. On June 19, barely ten
days after the defeat in the 1938 World Cup, Vargas’ government published the Decree-Law
526—highly anticipated in Brazilian society—announcing the first measure of the new state to
address the issue of sports regulation. It not only created the National Council of Culture, but
also made sports part of the Brazilian cultural development:

DECREES:
ART. 2º The National Council of Culture will be the department responsible for
coordinating all activities concerning cultural development, run by the Ministry of
Education and Health or under its control or influence.
§1º The cultural development will oversee the following activities:
[...]
g) the civic education through every sort of collective demonstration.
h) Physical Education (gymnastics and sports) (Brazilian Decree-Law 526 1938, 13385)

From this standpoint, the cultural development may be read as the reinforcement of the habit
of sports practice—football—and the act of supporting clubs and the national team. These were
collective demonstrations characterized by a civic and patriotic ideal, registered in many of
Vargas’ speeches and in the rhetoric of the national team’s coaches.
A year after the creation of the National Sports Council, on April 14, 1941, Vargas
established Decree-Law 3,199, which included among its objectives to secure a convenient and
constant discipline for the organization and management of associations and other sporting
entities of the country, so as to make sports an efficient process of physical and spiritual
education for the youth and a high expression of culture and national energy.
After Vargas had assumed total control over Brazilian sports, on the eve of the South
American Championship of 1942, in Uruguay, the newspaper Gazeta Esportiva summarized the
making of a national identity exalting civic and patriotic duties, which had to be performed by
players and supporters, as well, who were eagerly rooting and listening to the radio broadcast:

The National Team should be aware of its role of synaesthetic element of the Nation
which it would be destined to in every competition. Representing Brazil was an honor.
Doing it with dignity was a duty. It was made clear to everybody that these duties
should be learned by heart. They have to understand also that it is their duty to maintain
the name of the homeland in high regard, by means of an exemplary behavior,
demonstrated in all instances. This is how it has been throughout the years; and now
more than ever, when the government of the Republic has decided to officialize and
protect sports, this conduct, being the natural consequence of normal patriotic feelings,
constitutes furthermore a legal imperative, that no person may disrespect.

Thereafter, the victories of the national team fed the civic pride of the people, and the
government went to great lengths to prepare for hosting the 1948 World Cup, even constructing a
stadium in the capital.
Such was the importance of football during that period that the cornerstone for the
construction of Maracanã in 1948 was put into place as a representation of the interests of the
Brazilian people and the people from Rio de Janeiro (Júnior 2007). The outcome of this
tournament became known as Maracanazzo, when Brazil, playing for an audience of 100 million
fans, lost to Uruguay by one goal, leaving a mark on the national pride. Interestingly, the
unforgettable defeat to Germany (7–1), currently known as “Mineirazzo” and followed by

44
 TOBAR AND GUSSO: BECOMING BRAZILIAN

political issues, would definitely mark the change in the Brazilian people’s notion of the national
team as a “pure and unquestionable” symbol of national identity.

The 2014 World Cup, Corruption Scandals at FIFA, and Damage to the
Brazilian People’s Relationship with the National Team
As noted earlier, in Brazil, football is like a book that contains all the features of Brazilian
society, both positive and negative. In that context, the 2014 FIFA World Cup not only
uncovered the shortcomings of the Brazilian government, easily seen during the nationwide
protests, but also helped to set up an important debate which questioned the established notion of
the national team as a legitimate representative of national identity. A major point of controversy
was the disclosure of corruption cases involving FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football
Association) and CBF (Brazilian Football Federation) officials. In order to understand these
events and their impact on the idea of football as a national symbol, it is important to note that in
2010 the Brazilian Institute of Geography and Statistics recorded 1.315 million football fans in
Brazil ten years of age and older (Gonçalves 2013). In addition, before the Confederations Cup
and World Cup FIFA 2014, a survey conducted by the Brazilian Institute of Statistics and Public
Opinion in 2013 revealed that 77 percent of Brazilian people consider football the biggest
Brazilian passion (IBOPE 2013).
Then, one year after the World Cup, documents obtained by Brazilian journalist Jamil Chade
from the respected newspaper Estadão exposed an agreement between the CBF and Cayman
Islands-registered company International Sports Events (ISE), detailing that the players selected
for Brazilian squads must meet certain established criteria of marketability and reputation, even
stipulating that the CBF would have to “guarantee” the presence of what it called “Team A”
players at every game, or face a 50 percent cut to its appearance fee. In his recent book, Chade
(215, 65) explains the scenario, “The problem is that this cultural asset, this team that calls itself
‘national,’ which uses our colours, sings our anthem and says it represents us, was taken over by
a private group that got rich using our emotion. In our identity. Those who looked after our
national identity were, in fact, exploiting it.” These incidents resulted in protests contesting the
structure managed by CBF. Surveys reinforced these feelings, showing that the population no
longer saw the Brazilian team and entities such as CBF and FIFA as transparent bodies that were
responsible for football.
The Brazilian people’s lack of interest in the football team started to increase and became
more evident when research conducted by the Instituto Paraná was published in December 2015,
in São Paulo, a city of more than twelve million inhabitants. The researchers interviewed a
sample of 1,040 people. When asked about whether they had faith that changes would take place
regarding the management of Brazilian football as a whole, 67.7 percent answered negatively.
Within this number, 44 percent understood that the Brazilian Football Federation and all the
clubs must undergo police investigations. Another point that concerns the perception of football
as an icon of national identity is that 41.2 percent of the interviewees demonstrated less interest
in football since 2013, against 7.7 percent who liked it more, and 48.1 percent whose opinion did
not change.
Other research conducted by Datafolha Institute on February 8 and 9 and published on
March 1, 2017, showed not only that the greatest lack of knowledge is among fans of teams from
Corinthians, Palmeiras, São Paulo, and Santos that live in São Paulo, but also the population’s
low level of interest in football. By asking questions such as, “What is your favorite team?,”
“What are the most important matches you can recall involving Corinthians, Palmeiras, São
Paulo, and Santos?,” and also asking for the names of three of their teams’ players, this research
tried to establish preferences and who followed their teams more closely. In response to the first
question, 24 percent (representing nearly three million people in São Paulo) answered that they
do not support a team. When we asked them to recall the names of three players from their
beloved team, 60 percent admitted not knowing and another 9 percent answered, but could not
match any names, totaling 69 percent of participants who did not know the names of their teams’
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THE INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SPORT AND SOCIETY

players. This scenario of low popularization of football could be explained by other factors, thus
reinforcing the conclusions of the research. On this matter, we should state that Brazilian
stadiums had been undergoing a process of upgrading and that construction had begun for the
2014 World Cup, affecting the notion of stadiums as “historical places of belongingness,
identities and popular use” (Mascarenhas 2013, 146).
The high prices of tickets (in 2016 they averaged $14.00 USD per match, which represents
3.9 percent of the minimum wage, while at the same time in the UK the ticket price represented
2.7 percent) and banning of long-time traditions, such as carrying flags, playing musical
instruments, making use of luminous effects, and drinking beer in the stands, helps to explain
why people have lost interest in football. Another factor that has affected public interest is the
2015 corruption scandals. In 2015, the attendance rate at first division games was 17,044 fans per
match, while at the second division games the numbers were lower, averaging 6,523 supporters.
Last year attendance decreased, as expected. In 2016, the attendance rates were 15,188 per game
in the first division and 5,175 in the second division (Sr 2017). Such facts clearly demand action
by the government and the CBF in order to prevent what could mean the decline of the idea of
Brazil as the country of football (Lima 2017).
It is urgent to recognize football and the national team as “Brazil’s Cultural Heritage” in
order to develop and organize plans for the short- and long-term to encourage fans to start
watching football again. Unfortunately, since 2001 seven patrimonialization bills authored by
senators and representatives have all been refused by a large group of politicians with dubious
connections to CBF directors. Once both are officially recognized as Brazilian Cultural Heritage,
the CBF would fall under the radar of the Public Prosecutor’s Office, and its economical
transactions would immediately be placed under investigation, backed by federal law 8,625 of
1993.
If the requests had been accepted, it would have meant a new era of change for Brazilian
football. People would have taken part in the process of defining football as an official Cultural
Heritage and could have applied pressure to lower the prices of tickets in stadiums. In turn, this
would have given more credibility to the historical notion that football was appropriated by the
people, which was crucial to the base development of football as a national symbol. It would also
have meant a peaceful environment for fans to evoke identities and discourses that help to
reinforce the idea that rivalries exists only if both fans and teams remain close and strong. The
tragedy with Chapecoense’s aircraft was a good example of this possibility as we have seen fans
from different teams coming together for weeks. No one was expecting when Corinthians, the
2015 league champions, changed the colour of their webpage to the green of Chapecoense, which
is the same colour of Palmeiras team, the Corinthians’ main rival (Blakeley 2016).
Finally, from a public perspective, on “National Football Day” (July 19) the Brazilian
government must encourage many activities for young people, with the support of schools,
universities, sports clubs, and CBF. The creation of a Hall of Fame chosen by popular vote as
well as a National Museum of Football would be fundamental ways to communicate how
important football has been in the history of the country. Such initiatives would also help
scholars find and preserve testimonies from football legends that could be objects of new studies
in universities. We assume that such actions would represent the chance for a fresh start for
football in Brazil, especially if the corrupt directors were arrested and the national team played at
a sustained, high level, overcoming the past decade of poor performance and the accompanying
lack of interest from fans.

Conclusion
Many sporting nations develop a collective sense through participation in the global system,
importing a particular mix of sports to form their own sporting space, adapting foreign examples
to devise national styles, demonstrating special qualities when competing against one another,
using tournaments for national self-display, and feeding nationalist feelings on the thrill of
winning or losing. In a global society, nations identify themselves through sport (Lechner 2016).

46
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At the beginning of football’s popularization, although status-quo measures were put into place
by the managers, the claimants—blacks and the poor—were able to play within a social frame
strongly structured against their interests. By persistently following the matches and showing
ability on the field against the aristocrats, they were able to climb to high positions within the
social spaces in which they belonged. Faced with the impossibility of reversing and feeding off
the differences negatively, Getúlio Vargas’ government and the intellectual elite, such as
Gilberto Freyre and the sports press, systematically popularized football through a project of
identity construction made up fundamentally of mulattos and the poor. The idea of constructing
the national team as a symbol of national identity was successful for the majority of Brazilian
people.
In the modern world, the national culture into which one is born comprises the major source
of cultural identity. When we define ourselves, sometimes we say that we are English, Welsh,
Indian, or Jamaican. Obviously, when we do this we are speaking metaphorically, not literally.
These identities are not printed in our genes. However, we think of them as if they were part of
our essential nature (Hall 2005). In other words, national identities are not things with which we
are born; they are actually formed and transformed within the representation of one’s country
(Hall 2005). For example, to paraphrase Hall (2005), we know what it means to be Brazilian
because of the manner in which the “Brazilian way” has been represented as a set of meanings—
a system of cultural representation with the perception that everyone likes carnaval, samba, and
football (Hall 2005). In the case of football, it seemed clear that there was a habitus among the
majority of the population, in the sense that Brazilians watched and lived football from birth, at
least before the 2014 World Cup and the corruption cases mentioned above.
Setton (2002) stresses that in this contemporary age the production and flow of cultural
references play a main role in the development of modern man’s ethics, identity, and cognition.
In Brazil, the CBF’s corruption was supposed to remain a secret, but it came to light. Fans began
to call for structural changes in the institution that would adopt new views, appreciation, and
action standards for the Brazilian team, which in the past had been undisputedly considered a
symbol of national identity. In summary, the Brazilian people can revive and reshape the notion
of football as a symbol of national identity, assuming that the social importance and passion that
football and the national team have generated during the past century in Brazilian society can
continue and that the sport can appeal to popular tastes, without interference from corrupt
directors.

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ABOUT THE AUTHORS
Felipe Tobar: Master’s Candidate, Cultural Heritage and Society Programme, Univille
University, Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil

Luana Gusso: Professor, Cultural Heritage and Society Programme, Univille University,
Joinville, Santa Catarina, Brazil
49
The International Journal of Sport and Society provides
a forum for wide-ranging and interdisciplinary
examination of sport, including: the history, sociology,
and psychology of sport; sports medicine and health;
physical and health education; and sports
administration and management. The discussions in
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fundamental logic of sport, to highly localized readings
of sporting practices in particular times and places.

As well as articles of a traditional scholarly type, this

journal invites case studies that take the form of
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effects of those practices.

The International Journal of Sport and Society is a

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ISSN 2152-7857

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