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Fixing Brazilian Soccer

Fixing Brazilian Soccer

Brazil used to play the “beautiful game”. It didn’t need to win to be recognized for that. The national teams of 1982 and 1986 left memorable images in soccer history.

Nowadays, Brazil’s soccer is terrible on the field, and an opaque business outside the field. On 1983, Zico was sold to Udinese for about U$4 million, what was an enormous transaction at the time. Today, mediocre players are sold abroad for far more than U$4 million. The national team is suspect of selecting players only to get them eligible to play in some European leagues that require a certain number of appearances in a national team in order to concede them the visa reserved for exceptional athletes.

How would one fix Brazilian soccer now that a humiliating participation in the 2014 FIFA World Cup at home proves that repeating the mantra that Brazil was a World Cup winner 5 times won’t make it the champion one more time?

Keep it simple, and copy what worked for others! Time to copy Germany. Brazil needs to go back to having an enormous quantity of players practicing soccer daily, needs to apply scientific methods in the preparation of teams and players, and needs transparency and honesty at all soccer management levels.

When I was growing up in Brazil, most kids played soccer every day. I played it in school, played it in clubs, and played it in a field near home. Nowadays, most kids can play only FIFA Soccer on videogames every day. In urban centers, the “field near home” is gone. Living in apartments, many without a playing area, a few kids go to soccer practice once or twice a week in private training fields. That excludes large parts of the population that cannot pay for this “service”, which becomes just another duty in the busy schedule of middle class players, in between the English and violin classes. They end-up becoming a bored and mediocre practitioner in all those skills. Meanwhile, the kids without a full agenda who can still practice soccer every day are likely from families without a good standard of living. Those typically dont have the body structure to be good soccer players (not to talk about the mental discipline). Most will only become puppets in the hands of their “career managers”. On the eve of losing 7x1 to Germany, many Brazilian players used a lot of time in a hair stylist!

In order to again democratize soccer, Brazil needs to do what other countries are doing, and bring it back to normal public schools. In England, I saw that many schools had a soccer field sponsored by the FA (Football Association). I read that the same is being done in Germany and other countries. In the USA, the community parks, which used to have only baseball fields and basketball courts, nowadays have also a soccer field. Schools have soccer teams, and soccer leagues are all around, and games are played on those community parks. Quantity of players practicing is essential. Not enough, but a requirement.

Methodically and scientifically, you then filter from that enormous quantity of practitioners the small percentage of players that demonstrate potential. Growing up, I repeatedly heard the story of Zico, who was a young player with great potential who needed a special diet to get a stronger body. Would it be possible that only Zico needed such diet? Despite all his talent, Ronaldo, who played for Cruzeiro in Brazil, left for PSV early on this career, and there he had to make exercises and go on a diet to get body mass. Had Brazil forgotten how to improve the athleticism of its soccer players?

Nothing is easier to improve in Brazil than assignment of players to soccer positions. The Brazilian approach is simple: the best players in the midfield, so they get the ball the most. Second best, forwarders. Third best: defense. Those who can barely play: goalkeepers. No wonder Brazil has terrible goalkeepers, and the slowest defenders on the planet. And although I include those in the “method and science” area, I would need an entire post to talk about the lack of knowledge about tactics and the lack of discipline regarding positioning by Brazilian players. Postponed to later.

For now, let’s talk about transparency and honesty. Soccer in Brazil is nowadays part of a big money laundering scheme of the world. You have 10 million dollars you need to “explain”? Simple. You buy the “rights” for 100 young soccer players in the Brazil. Average: U$100K/player, which is not that much for the owner of U$10M illegal dollars, but a lot of money for the families of poor kids showing potential when they are still around 12 years old. Afterwards, you wait. You need just one of those players to succeed, and be negotiated a few years later to a bigger team, usually in Europe, for about U$20M. After taxes and other negotiation expenses, you now have U$10M of “legalized”” money, which you got by using a new kind of slavery.

That is not all. Did you consider where the U$20M from a European club came from? It may be from a Russian billionaire, a Saudi Arabia prince, or an offshore company that can rarely explain how it got the money. Why, among all other investment options in the world, it decided to invest in a soccer club? Use your imagination.

Honesty will only happen with transparency. Right now, a lot of what happens in soccer is done under the tables, and the tables have the same people around them for a long while. Nepotism plagues soccer like no other sport. While schools dont have soccer fields (at times, some location dont have the needed schools!) stadiums are built in places in which nobody can justify their cost of operation (let’s forget the cost of building). Politicians get involved in soccer whenever convenient. Soccer players and club managers get involved in politics. Members of the press marry players. The population pays for all those involved to live making up a show with little relationship to the sport that everyone loves.

If it goes back to having an enormous quantity of players practicing soccer daily, apply scientific method in preparation of teams and players, and improves transparency and honesty at all levels then Brazil can get back to playing the “beautiful game”, and possibly winning another World Cup. Or at least losing with honor.

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