Why Soccer Matters Page 3

  7

  A new energy was taking hold in Brazil, and everybody could feel it. People seemed to have a spring in their step, a desire to impress the world, even in far-flung places like Baurú where the Cup was barely more tangible than a rumor. As such, our little bunch of players on Rubens Arruda Street felt inspired to do something bigger and better. We decided to go beyond just our usual pickup games and organize ourselves into a proper team, like the Brazilian national team, or Dondinho’s BAC. We wanted to have all the proper gear—shirts, shorts, shoes and socks. And of course we’d need something better than a wadded-up bunch of socks for a ball.

  There was one hitch: We didn’t have ten cents among us.

  I suggested to the gang that maybe we could raise funds by putting together a collection of soccer stickers. These stickers were all the rage at the time—they were sort of like baseball cards, with each sticker bearing a player’s photo and maybe a few statistics as well. So my idea was to get all the kids to pool our stickers together and put them together in an album, focusing on the really popular teams from Rio and São Paulo, so the collection would be worth more. We’d then find somebody willing to swap the album for a real leather ball.

  This plan was quickly accepted, but it still left us many miles short of our ambitious fund-raising goal. One kid nicknamed Zé Porto suggested that we could bridge the difference by selling toasted peanuts at the door to the circus and the movie theater. Ah, a great idea! But where would we get the peanuts? As it turned out, Zé Porto had a ready-made solution for this problem, too. He smiled deviously and suggested that we could just steal some peanuts from one of the warehouses down by the railway.

  This idea made some of us really uneasy. I remembered my mom’s dire warning that theft was one of the very worst sins. I could sense other boys thinking the exact same thing. But Zé Porto was quite the persuasive fellow. He argued that even if we couldn’t get into the warehouse, we could break into one of the train wagons themselves, and, anyway, who would notice if a few bags of peanuts went missing?

  “Besides,” he added, “anybody who doesn’t agree is a big shit!”

  Well, we couldn’t really argue with that. So down we all went to the train station, walking on eggshells the whole way. As one of the group’s unofficial leaders, I was selected as one of the two kids who would actually slip inside the train wagons to get the peanuts. I had my misgivings, but . . . anything for soccer, I guess.

  As we slipped into the train wagons, I couldn’t shake the mental image of my mom looking over us, arms folded, shaking her head in disapproval and sadness. But it was too late to turn back. We cut the sacks open, and a tidal wave of peanuts came pouring out onto the wood floor. We frantically gathered them up in our pockets, our shirts, and in the rusty old bucket we had brought along for the job. Finally, after what seemed like an eternity, we ran out with our loot and found the rest of the group. We all sprinted home, laughing and shouting with joy—and relief.

  We toasted the peanuts and then sold them as planned, using the funds to acquire our shorts. When we realized that shirts were beyond our budget—and that pressing our luck again with the trains was a really bad idea—we settled for matching vests instead. That still left us without socks or shoes, but we were too excited by that point to care. At first we called ourselves the Descalsos—the “Shoeless Ones”—until we realized there were several other teams in Baurú that had the exact same nickname, for the exact same reason we did.

  We became known instead as the Sete de Setembro team, named after the street that intersected mine, which was in turn named for Brazil’s independence day—the seventh of September. With our gear now in hand, and a couple of ace players, we began taking ourselves extremely seriously. Before our games, we would file one-by-one onto the field—OK, the street—with great solemnity, just like we’d seen Dad’s team do. We scheduled games against other squads in the neighborhood, and we won most of them, sometimes by double digits. I began to make all kinds of crazy moves, bouncing the ball on my head, on my knees. Sometimes, I would laugh hysterically at hapless players from other neighborhoods as I blew past them, on my way to yet another goal.

  One evening, Dondinho came home from the general store looking quite upset. When dinner was over, he said he wanted to talk to me—alone.

  “I walked by the street where you and your friends were playing today, and I saw what you were doing out there,” he said.

  My eyes must have lit up. Surely he’d seen me make some great new move?

  “I’m furious with you, Dico,” he said. “I saw how you were mocking those other boys. You should respect them more. That talent you have? You didn’t do a single thing to deserve it. It was God who gave you that talent!

  “Those other boys weren’t blessed in the same way—so what? That doesn’t give you the right to act like you’re better than them.

  “You’re just a boy,” he continued gravely, wagging his finger at me. “You haven’t done anything yet. Not a thing. When you’ve accomplished something, one day, then you can celebrate. But even then—you’ll do it with humility!”

  I was shocked. I remember desperately wanting to go run and hide in my bedroom, which I shared with Zoca. But, as usual with Dondinho, it was superb advice—that conversation would stick with me for many, many years. And as things turned out, it would have been a great warning for the whole of Brazil as well.

  8

  When the World Cup finally got under way, all of our neighborhood games stopped so that we could pay proper attention to the tournament. And it seemed for a while as if all our breathless excitement had been justified. Brazil won the opening match in Rio in lopsided fashion—a 4–0 slaughter of Mexico, led by two goals from Ademir—a great player from Vasco da Gama who was also known as “Jaw” because of—well, what else?—his prominent chin. The next match was a much more sober affair: a 2–2 tie against Switzerland in the Pacaembu Stadium in São Paulo. But a 2–0 victory over Yugoslavia quickly soothed any nerves, and just like that, Brazil was on to the final round.

  From that point on, it was as if a monster had been awakened. Brazil destroyed a pretty good Swedish team by a score of 7–1, led by four goals from “Jaw” alone. Four days later, our team obliterated Spain in similar fashion, racking up a 6–1 win with goals from five different players. The Brazilian team appeared to be skilled and well balanced, with a good defense and a wide range of scoring options on offense. They played to crowds that showered them with chants, confetti, and all the love you’d expect from a hometown audience. And with seemingly no effort, much less suspense, Brazil was now one game away from winning the championship altogether. Maybe Dondinho was right—this Cup would be ours after all.

  The matchup was the one everybody had wanted—against Uruguay. A nation of sheep farms and sandy beaches on Brazil’s southern border, Uruguay had a population of just over two million people—we had far more folks just in Rio de Janeiro. And they, unlike Brazil, had limped through the final round of play—barely eking out a 2–2 draw with Spain, and needing a goal with just five minutes left to beat Sweden 3–2.

  We even had the best possible venue for the game: the brand-new Maracanã Stadium in Rio, which had been built especially for the World Cup. Because of its massive scale and architectural flourishes, it seemed less like a stadium than an imperial palace, financed at lavish cost for the explicit purpose of crowning the home team. The Brazilian government brought in more than ten thousand workers to carry out the construction. As completion neared, the workers would “test” the structure by packing into parts of the stands and celebrating imaginary goals. Luckily, all the pillars and beams held up. When the work was finally finished, two years later, the Maracanã had a capacity of just under two hundred thousand people—making it the biggest stadium in the world, more than forty thousand beyond the runner-up, Hampden Park in Glasgow, Scotland.

  Brazilian media and politicians fell all ove
r themselves, seemingly competing to see who could shower the Maracanã—and, by extension, Brazil—with the most praise. “Brazil has now built the biggest and most perfect stadium in the world, dignifying the competence of its people and its evolution in all branches of human activity,” the newspaper A Noite wrote. “Now, we have a stage of fantastic proportions in which the whole world can admire our prestige and sporting greatness.”

  If that seems a tad over-the-top, it was nothing compared to the excitement on game day. Carnival-style parades swept through the streets of Rio, singing special songs written to celebrate Brazil’s coronation as the best in the world. Many workers took the day off, and filled their houses with beer and sweets in anticipation of the wild party that would surely occur afterward. One newspaper even printed a photo of the team on its front page, with the headline: THESE ARE THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD!

  As the Brazilian team took the field, the players were delighted to see the Maracanã at full capacity—an estimated two hundred thousand people, which remains, even today, the biggest crowd ever to see a soccer game. Before the game started, the team was presented with gold watches carrying the inscription: FOR THE CHAMPIONS OF THE WORLD. And then, just in case anybody missed the point, the governor of Rio de Janeiro state addressed the team, the crowd and the nation:

  “You Brazilians, whom I consider victors of the tournament . . . You players who in less than a few hours will be acclaimed by millions of your compatriots . . . You have no equals in the terrestrial hemisphere . . . You who are so superior to every other competitor . . . You whom I already salute as conquerors!”

  Amid all of this exaltation, there was only one voice of caution. But it came from a pretty worrying source.

  “This isn’t an exhibition. It’s a match like any other, only harder,” Brazil’s coach, Flávio Costa, told reporters the day before the game. “I’m afraid that my players will take the field as though they already had the championship shield sewn on their jerseys.”

  9

  All of this raises the question: Man, Brazil, what was with all the hype?

  Were we being naïve? Stupid?

  Or was there something else going on?

  One thing I’ve learned over the years—sometimes the hard way—is that what’s happening on the soccer field almost never tells the full story. This is true not just in Brazil, but in countries all over the world. You always have to look outside those white lines—at the players’ lives, the teams themselves, and very often, the political situation in the country—to figure out what’s really going on.

  At the 1950 World Cup, it was especially obvious that sport was only one part of the story. For the first time, but certainly not the last, Brazilian politicians saw the tournament as a golden opportunity to enhance our country’s reputation—as well as their own. During that era, Brazil was still seen by many people in Europe and the United States as a tropical backwater, a banana republic, awash in diseases like cholera and dysentery, populated mostly by Indians and illiterate former slaves. If that sounds harsh, or politically incorrect . . . that’s because it was. But it was a view that was repeated even by many Brazilian officials, including the mayor of Rio, who declared that the World Cup was a chance to show the world that we were not “savages,” and that Brazil could compete with the rich countries of the world—and win.

  This was a grossly one-sided way of seeing Brazil, which in reality had been charming outsiders for centuries with its many positive attributes. In fact, even the story of our independence was one of seduction. Unlike most of Latin America, Brazil had been colonized not by the Spanish, but the Portuguese. In 1808, the Portuguese royal family, fleeing Napoleon’s invading armies, fled Lisbon and moved the court to Rio de Janeiro—and in so doing, became the first European royals ever to set foot in one of their colonies, much less relocate there. Yet the revealing thing is that, even after Napoleon was defeated and his armies no longer posed a threat, some of the royal family—including the prince regent’s son, Pedro I—decided to stay behind.

  Why? Well, look—I’ve been to Lisbon many times, and it’s a very cool city. But in Rio, you’ve got powdery sand, quarter moon–shaped bays, lush, green mountains, and beautiful, diverse, welcoming people. Pedro I could walk out of his palace every morning down a short street lined with king palm trees to take a dip in the Flamengo Bay, all while admiring a view of Sugar Loaf Mountain. So when the rest of the royal family sent him a letter in 1822 demanding he return to Portugal, Pedro I did the logical thing—he told them to go to hell. “Fico!” he declared. “I’m staying!” And just like that, with no bloodshed at all, Brazil was born as an independent nation. It was September 7, the day my first soccer team was named after—known still as the day of the “Fico.”

  It’s a lovely story, and one that is hardly an aberration—you never needed to be a monarch to properly enjoy Brazil. Many millions of immigrants from all over the world also came here, became entranced by the people and the possibilities, and decided to stay. But the story of Pedro I also sheds some light on why our government’s officials were feeling so nervous in 1950—more than a century had passed since independence, but our politics were still a mess. Since the “Fico,” Brazil had lurched from one crisis to another, constantly beset by revolutions and coups and regional uprisings. Just two decades earlier, São Paulo had risen up in a failed revolt against the government in Rio. During World War II, Brazilian soldiers had bravely fought on the side of the Allies—on the side of democracy—only to return home to a dictatorship. As the World Cup began, Brazil was taking baby steps toward progress, but its place in the modern world still seemed very uncertain. “Brazil was a country without glory, fresh out of a dictatorship, in the doldrums of the Dutra government,” wrote Pedro Perdigão, in his book about the 1950 World Cup. In other words: Our politicians felt, especially in 1950, like they had something to prove. And they were counting on soccer to help them do so.

  Finally, there was one other big issue that was looming over everything in 1950. This was another piece of history, and it was one that was particularly meaningful for the Nascimento family.

  We think, based on research that journalists have done over the years, that our ancestors originally came from what is today Nigeria or Angola. The Nascimento name itself was probably adopted from a ranching family in Brazil’s northeast. Indeed, our ancestors were among as many as 5.8 million slaves who were brought to Brazil over the years. That’s nearly twenty times as many as came to the United States, according to some estimates. At one point, there were probably more slaves in Brazil than free people! Brazil was also one of the world’s last countries to abolish the practice, in 1888—more than two decades after the end of the American Civil War.

  Slavery was, in other words, a huge part of our country’s story. Fernando Henrique Cardoso, a renowned sociologist who became president of Brazil in the 1990s (and my boss, for a few years!), once called it “the root cause of Brazilian inequality.” Now, it’s true that we never had enforced segregation of the races like America did—in part because there had been a whole lot of, shall we say, intermingling over the years. As a result, anybody trying to determine who was white or black would have had a heck of a headache on their hands. Violence between “blacks” and “whites” was also rare. It was commonly said, especially when I was growing up in the 1950s, that Brazil was a “racial democracy.” Sports Illustrated once wrote that I lived “happily in one of the few places in the world where color has no effect on a man’s life.”

  But that was only half true: The freed slaves, and their descendants in Brazil, had a tougher life than most. While there was no official discrimination, in practice black Brazilians often had no access to schools, hospitals or any of the other things that could help you move forward in life. I think about the poverty that I grew up in, and that my parents experienced when they were children, and I think our history must have played a role, even if it wasn’t always obvious
how. Slavery certainly wasn’t a distant or abstract idea for our family—Dona Ambrosina, my grandmother who lived with us, was herself the daughter of slaves. Our family was proud of the progress we’d made, and I was—and I am—very proud to be black. But it was also evident, then as now, that the darker your skin in Brazil, the poorer you tended to be.

  As a result, even by 1950, Brazil remained a country of mostly poor, sometimes very desperate people who often didn’t have enough to eat. This knowledge has always made Brazilian politicians a little bit uneasy. And it probably also helps explain why the hype machine for the World Cup was cranked up to high gear. In the end, officials in Rio weren’t just trying to convince the world that progress was coming to Brazil—they were desperately trying to convince their own people!

  In later years, we’d feel pretty silly about the way we acted in 1950. But I believe that, when Dondinho said things like “That Cup is ours!” he was probably repeating things he heard on the radio. Those things, in turn, came from the politicians—sometimes on direct orders to the media. All of Brazil got caught up in this propaganda, and it would bleed onto the soccer field in the most unfortunate ways. That was something I’d see throughout my life, again and again and again and again.

  10

  As our friends and family filed into the house, I had one last question.

  “Dad?”

  “Yes, Dico?”

  “Can I go downtown with you to the celebration?”

  I could see my mom, violently shaking her head no, out of the corner of my eye. But Dad just pretended he couldn’t see her.

  “All right,” he said with a smile. “Not for long, but just for a little while.”

  Delirious with happiness, I floated over to the radio to listen as closely as I could to the action. The massive crowd in the Maracanã was roaring with excitement. The radio announcers were introducing, one by one, the players from the Brazilian team. They were a formidable squad—a mix of skilled players and vivid personalities. There was Zizinho, my favorite player of the Brazilian national team, a man many compared to Leonardo da Vinci because of his artistry on the field. Barbosa, the ace goalie, who had allowed just four goals in our six games. Ademir—the Jaw! And Bigode, a left back who was playing at the time for Flamengo, one of the big clubs in Rio, and got a big cheer as he took the field.