“This is the West, sir. When the legend becomes fact, print the legend.” —The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance
What if the legend stops being fact? What if the legend not only stops being fact, but goes on being printed anyway, printed incessantly, at every opportunity, printed and duplicated and reprinted and reduplicated to the point that it becomes an inescapable atmospheric cliché? What if it starts to distort the desire it originally gave expression to? What if it stops even being a legend, and becomes instead a slogan, a logo, a trademark, a campaign?
Brazil do not play a particularly attractive brand of football, though within football, they have formed a particularly attractive brand. Under Dunga, they’ve adopted a methodical, disciplined, and businesslike approach to the game, one part Mourinho and two parts Mannschaft. They score from set pieces, they win headers, they build from strength in the back. There’s nothing wrong with that, though from a stylistic standpoint it’s often a bit banal. Under Nike, however, they’re relentlessly exported as the avatars of creativity, beauty, and joy in football, as though the 1970 World Cup never came to an end.
I mind this. I mind being told that I have to love Brazil because “all true lovers of the beautiful game,” etc. Brazil didn’t invent the beautiful game, they only invented new ways to sell it. It’s no coincidence that João Havelange, the lavishly corrupt former president of FIFA who essentially gave birth to modern sports marketing through the sponsorship deals he signed with Coca-Cola and Adidas, was the head of the Brazilian Football Confederation before he went to FIFA. Nor that he secured his election as FIFA president in part by exploiting the prestige of Pelé and the Brazilian national team. During Havelange’s 25-year reign in Zurich, Brazil became the centerpiece of FIFA marketing, the “samba football” ideal started being used to sell cheeseburgers, and the CBF profited enormously, scooping in huge sponsorship deals such as the record-breaking £100 million contract they signed with Nike in 1996.
The image of free-flowing, spontaneous, dancelike soccer—an image that was based on a real culture that had nothing to do with the marketing deals, and on wonderful players who were artificially shrunk in the orbit of Pelé—became so ingrained that, particularly in the last decade, it paradoxically started to seem joyless. Even when the team really played that way, it was impossible not to see it as a kind of contractual obligation, as though Nike, who were already in charge of arranging many of Brazil’s international friendlies, were programming their tactics as well. When the team weren’t playing that way, as they haven’t been over the last few years, the gap between their mythic identity and and their mundane reality imposed a bizarre cognitive dissonance on their games. During their World Cup qualifier against Argentina on Saturday night, my Twitter feed was full of two things: reports on the USA-El Salvador match that was happening at the same time, and jokes about how the announcers wouldn’t stop gushing about the samba even though Brazil were playing like 2005-era Chelsea.
Everyone basically knows all this. Complaints about the team’s moribund style are commonplace in Brazil, where football is still one of the emblems of national identity, and the role played by corporate sponsors in the seleção has been a point of country-wide anxiety. (After the loss to France in the 1998 World Cup final, the relationship with Nike was subjected to a months-long congressional investigation that resulted in dozens of charges of corruption.) But within the promotional and presentational arms of the sport—in commercials and by commentators—Brazil continue to be portrayed as twinkling icons of innocent aesthetic purity. We’re effectively asked not to see what we’re seeing, effectively so that Ronaldinho’s smile can move some more vitamin units. I’m not the sort of fan who believes that money is always wrong in football or that commercialism is exclusively bad for the game, but when you’re marketing what amounts to your own purity, and all the official channels keep rhapsodizing about how pure you are even though everyone sees what’s happening, something is out of joint.
Brazil have one of the most glorious histories in the game, have produced some of its most spellbinding players, and have some marvelously talented players on their roster now. I would love nothing more than to see them recapture the qualities that made them one of soccer’s great joys between, say, 1958 and 1986. In the meantime, I kind of hope they don’t make their own World Cup.
Read More: Brazil
by Brian Phillips · September 7, 2009
I should say for the sake of not getting yelled at later that I absolutely reserve the right to get really excited about anything good Brazil do in the future. Just so we’re clear on that.
Francismar would not approve.
At the risk of taking your post far too seriously, I daresay your problems are with a)Nike, b)Havelange and c)FIFA, not with Brazil, who are doing nothing more criminal than playing to their strengths and demolishing all comers in South American qualifying.
Would you really have them not take advantage of their strength on set pieces? Maybe refuse to play free kicks into the box, because they’re not pretty enough, and no one can properly defend them? Or have Dunga pull a Milan and call up Ronaldinho because of what he once symbolized, despite his current profound uselessness? Goodness, do I hope not. (I mean, did you see Ronaldinho in the derby? No? Exactly.)
Yeah, I guess that’s fair enough. My underlying problem isn’t really with the specific players and coaches on the current Brazil team, and no, I’m not saying they should play a flair game they’re not capable of just to live up to their marketing. My problem is with the image of Brazil or with what Brazil are supposed to represent, which means it definitely includes FIFA and Nike.
But I also think Brazil have been willing partners in the way their image has been used, and while I mostly mean the football authorities (I don’t think they needed much persuading when Nike opened the checkbook), I also think some of the players have been pretty happy to trade on the team’s legacy. Nothing unique about that in either case, but then Argentina and Italy aren’t being held up as the paragons of everything good about soccer.
Basically, I think that when you look hard enough at the global identity of Brazil you start to see that it’s supported by a lot of the negative features of contemporary soccer culture. I guess I’m more interested in that just as a phenomenon than in who to blame for it specifically. Either way, it’s annoying.
Ok, I can’t argue with any of that.
I’ve got a lot of time for unpretty, practical football, so I tend to have a knee-jerk reaction to anything that seems like an attack on that on principle, but the trappings surrounding the rise and associated wild commercialization of “Brazil” (as opposed to Brazil) are fascinating to consider. Someone really needs to write a book about Havelange, and the changes wrought by/during his time at FIFA. How’s your Portuguese, Brian?
There is a huge section on it in David Goldblatt’s “The Ball Is Round: A Global History of Soccer”.
The section is called “The World Turned Upside Down: Joao Havelange, FIFA and the Transformation of Globall Football”.
Its definitely worth checking out.
That section, expanded to five times the length, and with full access to all of the horrible self-destruct-equipped files Andrew Jennings once glimpsed through a keyhole in the Ultimate Sanctum of the White Shroud a thousand feet below the FIFA headquarters in Zurich, would literally bring Garrincha back to life.
For the record, Brian, Tim Vickery of the BBC has been espousing these views for quite some time now. I understand your frustration as well. I have no problem with how they play at all, to watch a good strong holding midfielder (of which Brazil play 2) has an artistry of itself.
My issue also regards with the ‘myth’ of Samba Football, Joga Bonito (sp?) is seemingly an invention of Nike and as such I’m informed I will not be able to perform such marvels without a Nike boot (I couldn’t perform these marvels with or without a Nike boot, I’m a goalkeeper).
I also have a problem with this largely because it is a national team, just as I do that the Australian team name can not be mentioned in the same sentence without the name of our national airline.
Oh how I yearn for the days of Naming Rights Park (can you yearn for somthing in the future).
Whether you like the game they’re playing right now or are outraged by it (and are you only outraged because you’ve been sold the Joga Bonita idea?), I think Martha’s right, there’s a “Brazil.” And it is kinda depressing either way at the moment. It may also be an opiate-of-the-masses dilemma, not for Brazil but for the rest of us and our “Brazil”…no?
Those are your issues, Brian. For you and your therapist to work through. Tactically, the disaster of ’74 team failing to win despite its players being a team of pristine perfection, has tainted every team since to play cynically. This doesn’t take away, however, the vast number of incredible flair players Brazil has always produced. The rest is greed, hype and P.R.
Nice article Brian.
The disparity between Brazil’s current style of play and their reputation is something I too mentioned when writing about the game in Rosario, while I also wrote a piece back in February about Brazilians’ gripes with the national team and the way it is exploited by third parties with private interests. If I may:
http://www.just-football.com/2009/09/argentina-1-3-brazil-maradona-knives.html
http://www.just-football.com/2009/02/brazil-vs-italy-why-many-brazilians-do.html
While your article is extremely well-written (as always) and the points are valid, I do tend to share the view of Martha as well though. That while it definitely needs pointing out that Brazil’s current style of football is not all fun-loving artistry and stepovers, that doesn’t mean Brazil under Dunga should be criticised for simply playing effective, winning football.
It may not be ‘Brazil’ as we know it, but Dunga has already won the Copa America and Confederations Cup now, and his team look to be gelling well ahead of next year’s World Cup. He can’t be criticised for that.
Always preferrred Argentina.
So you don’t blame Bradley for fielding a weak side in the Gold Cup Final because the terrain has changed, yet you seem to criticize Brazil for adapting to the modern tactics of foul-setpiece-football.
My underlying frustration is with modern football and the 1-0 victory – at least Brazil still pokes forward for counters when they have a lead, unlike some tortoise-based teams
Bradley didn’t follow up the Gold Cup loss with a new advertising campaign that made the USMNT out to be the acme of style in soccer.
As I’ve said a couple of times now, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with the way Brazil are playing. It’s just time for them, their sponsors, FIFA, TV announcers, and everyone else to acknowledge what they’ve become and put the samba cliché to rest.
I think the archetypical persona of the ‘Brazilian’, maybe you could call it cliche– that of the beach-dwelling, samba-dancing, Carnival-parading free spirit in eternal pursuit of a happiness derived from pleasure and beauty– has been hyperbolically ascribed to the tactics of their national team. That’s kind of the nature of international football– we tend to see the national identity, or our idea of it anyway, reflected on the pitch. But often when you see Brazil in a big international match, you’re not witness to the free-style, aggressive attack you might have been sold on expecting. Rather, you see a talented team that plays not to lose, and one that does not showcase the individual artistry supposedly unique to Brazilian players. After all, it’s not like they turned Ronaldinho loose against France in ’06.
So who is the real ‘Brazil’? The Netherlands? Spain? Barca?
Just to say, as a Chelsea supporter: although Mourinho’s Chelsea team was founded on ruthless efficiency, grinding out results with the relentlessness of a cross-country train, the first two years of that era were wonderful to watch, especially when Arjen Robben was fit and Joe Cole was on the top of his game. Dull 1-0s against the likes of Charlton were counterbalanced by three goal thrashings of United and Liverpool. United were no prettier to watch last year for the most part, but everyone will remember the 5-2 reverse against Spurs and the 3-2 to Villa. Those were exceptional games in what was otherwise an unspectacular season.
Isn’t Nike’s marketing department taking a similar approach to Dunga? Nike doesn’t want to risk the dangers of re-branding Brazil and finding the next slogan less popular than the samba idea. Dunga doesn’t want to risk getting forward and having his defense caught out by the uncertainties of football. Its a match made in corporate heaven.
Alright, I didn’t think it would take this long, but I’ll go ahead:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DUzn8tobguk
Keep writing posts like this one and you’ll soon become known as the Glenn Beck of international soccer!
That was a joke, by the way. I’m not much of a fan, don’t know much about the game. But I keep coming back to this blog day after day to enjoy the inspired writing. You belong on a much bigger stage.
You guys watch and take seriously too many TV ads. So what if Nike wants to make out that Brazil still attack in waves of five or seven players at a time when they actually rather win a fk just inside the opposition half and pump a high ball for an unmarked Luizao to head home? They have to make their billion dollar profits somehow.
I’d probably agree with you if it were just Nike. But it’s not—it’s a whole host of other outlets, including match commentators. I’ve met neophyte fans who love Brazil “because of the way they play” after seeing a few games and concluding from the commentary that this must be that beautiful soccer they’ve been hearing about.
Did anyone else notice a difference between the Brazil playing away at Argentina, with European based players, and the Brazil at home, with Brazilian based players?
While the defending was atrocious, I actually was more impressed by their 4-2 win over Chile than the 3-0 victory over the Dieguito Maradonas
Dunga’s Brazil is one of the worst major national teams in recent years. Who cares if you win the world cup if you bore everyone. The ‘samba’ joga bonito football started and ended with Ronaldo, without him they make me want to kill babies(ok so he was unfit at WC 06 although he was involved in all their best plays). The Nike thing started with Ronaldo, they signed the deal because of him. Football, especially national teams are remembered for how they play, not what they win. Brasil 82 and Holland 74 can attest to that. Why bother being Brazil if you are going to bore everyone.
Ohh I mean the modern samba marketing joga bonito football started and ended with Ronaldo (Ronaldo/Romario combo anyone?).