Neal Collins soccer ‘Everything is corrupt.” “It’s like a web of prostitution.” “We have become too commercially orientated.” No, those aren’t the world views of the May 1 anarchists before tearing up the town this week. Just a very frank assessment of Brazilian football, issued by former captain Socrates. A shock 1-1 draw with Peru and an even more upsetting 1-0 defeat against Ecuador have left the world’s most glamourous football nation sweating for a place in the World Cup finals in Japan and Korea next year. And, according to the great Socrates, now a 47-year-old doctor, the reasons for Brazil’s decline aren’t hard to find. Two of them played for the country last month. He points his finger directly at a pair of unknowns picked for the game against Peru Ponte Preta striker Washington and Corinthians forward Ewerton.
Socrates, who became a household name with wonder-goals against Scotland and Italy during the World Cup in 1982 in Spain, says: “Washington is going to Milan and Ewerton is negotiating with Spanish clubs and that is no coincidence. Basic players like Djalminha are left out. Everyone knows that European clubs insist that Brazilians have played for the national team before they will even consider signing them.” Socrates, who won 63 caps and now wants an election to decide the next head of the Brazil football association, says: “Football is like a web of prostitution and everything is corrupt. All squads over the past few years have been suspect because the Brazilian national team has become so commercially orientated. “A Barcelona or Real Madrid player comes to Brazil to play alongside bad players and then has to put up with the pressures involved in playing for an organisation with suspect motives. Any player would lose the will to play in an environment like that. “The only South American team we are better than is Venezuela and that’s no exaggeration,” he told the Rio newspaper O Globo. “They are the only team we beat easily. Away from home, we’ve only beaten Peru and we made heavy weather of that. At home we were lucky against Uruguay, Colombia and Argentina.
“None of the coaching staff knows anything about tactics, nutrition or physiology. The organisation of Brazilian football is littered with mistakes. If we don’t do anything to change this situation, football will soon become another aspect of Brazilian society that is ostracised. “Any similarity between Brazilian prisons and Brazilian football is no coincidence. Football here is riddled with filth. The player is almost invariably forced to divide his salary between coaches, board members and agents.
“Brazilians identify with football and the coach of the national team gets more noticed than the president of the republic. Sport is the last relic of authoritarianism in the country. The dictatorship has ended, but the system has not changed. “I want to put Brazilian football under discussion. The people in charge of sport today are more interested in their personal targets than with the essence of sport. If we don’t do anything, Brazilian football will soon pass by under the bridge. All we will have left will be the skeletons of the stadiums.”
Socrates is not alone in his Two Brazilian congressional commissions are investigating alleged mismanagement and corruption in the sport.
Socrates recalls: “In the old days a World Cup qualifier was the same as a national holiday. The streets were empty. “The standard of players has got worse because the talents aren’t appearing the way they were 40 years ago and because we are not interested any more in preparing people to work with the kids. “To be a player today the boy has firstly to be stupid and then become incompetent. They have youth team matches on weekdays during the school day. So how is the athlete going to evolve?” If Brazil lose to Uruguay away their next qualifier they could slip to fifth and face a play-off with the Oceania winners (probably Australia, who recently beat Scotland in Scotland) to qualify for next year’s World Cup. Worse, they could end up sixth and will be forced to stay at home while the world’s greatest sporting event gets under way.