Football arrived in Brazil in 1894. The 'violent British sport' did unexpectedly well. Within decades it was the strongest symbol of Brazilian identity. The national team, as we all know, has won more World Cups than anyone else. The country has also produced Pelé, the greatest player of all time. More than that, Brazilians invented a flamboyant, thrilling and graceful style that has set an unattainable benchmark for the rest of the world. Britons call it the 'beautiful game'. Brazilians call it 'futebol-arte', or art-football. Whichever term you choose, nothing in international sport has quite the same allure.
I arrived in Brazil in 1998. I didn't do badly, either. I became a foreign correspondent. It was a job I'd always coveted and, journalistically speaking, Brazil is irresistible. The country is vast and colourful and diverse. Among its 170 million population there are more blacks than any other country except Nigeria, more Japanese than anywhere outside Japan, as well as 350,000 indigenous Indians, including maybe a dozen tribes who have not yet been contacted. Brazil is the world's leading producer of orange juice, coffee and sugar. It is also an industrialised nation, curiously one of the world's leading aeroplane-makers, and it has an impressive artistic heritage, especially in music and dance.
And, of course, they've got an awful lot of football.
Soon after I arrived I went to see the national team play. It was at the Maracanã, the spiritual home of Brazilian – ergo world – football. When the players filed on to the pitch, we jumped and cheered. The noise was like an electric storm, a rousing chorus of firecrackers, drumming and syncopated chants. It crystallised what I already knew; that the romance of Brazilian football is much more than the 'beautiful game'. We love Brazil because of the spectacle. Because their fans are so exuberantly happy. Because we know their stars by their first names – as if they are personal friends. Because the national team conveys a Utopian racial harmony. Because of the iconic golden yellow on their shirts.
We love Brazil because they are Braziiiiiiiiiil.
As a sports fan, I immediately took an interest in the domestic leagues. I read the sports pages, adopted a club and regularly went to matches. Following football is perhaps the most efficient way to integrate into Brazilian society.
As a journalist, I became increasingly fascinated with how football influences the way of life. And if football reflects culture, which I think it does, then what is it about Brazil that makes its footballers and its fans so . . . well . . . Brazilian.
That's what this book is about.
I first wanted to know how a British game brought over a little over a century ago could shape so strongly the destiny of a tropical nation. How could something as apparently benign as a team sport become the greatest unifying factor of the world's fifth-largest country? What do Brazilians mean when they say, with jingoistic pride, that they live in the 'football country'?
If football is the world's most popular sport, and if Brazil is football's most successful nation, then the consequences of such a reputation must be far-reaching and unique. No other country is branded by a single sport, I believe, to the extent that Brazil is by football.
The research took me a year. I flew, within the country's borders, the equivalent of the circumference of the world. I interviewed hundreds of people. First, the usual suspects: current and former players, club bosses, referees, scouts, journalists, historians and fans. Then, when I really wanted to get under the country's skin: priests, politicians, transvestites, musicians, judges, anthropologists, indian tribes and beauty queens. I also interviewed a man who makes a living performing keepie-uppies with ball bearings, rodeo stars who play football with bulls, a fan who is so peculiar-looking that he sells advertising space on his shirt and I discovered a secret plot involving Socrates and Libya's Colonel Muammar al-Gadaffi.
I was not interested in 'facts', like results or team lineups. Brazil is not big on facts anyway; it is a country built on stories, myths and Chinese whispers. The written word is not – yet – as trusted as the spoken one. (One of the country's more infuriating customs, especially if you are a journalist.) I was interested in people's lives and the tales they told.
The result, I hope, is a contemporary portrait of Latin America's largest country seen through its passion for football.
Brazil is the country where funeral directors offer coffins with club crests, where offshore oil rigs are equipped with five-a-side pitches and where a football club can get you elected to parliament.
I started my research in mid-2000, exactly half a century after the World Cup was held in Brazil and thirty years after Brazil won, so spectacularly, the title for the third time. It was a convenient starting point for reflection on the legacy of 'futebol-arte'.
I claim no responsibility, but within weeks Brazilian football was plunging into its most serious crisis ever. The national team lost a sequence of matches and Congress began two wide-ranging investigations into the sport.
The situation got worse and worse. Brazil kept on losing and Congressmen were shedding light upon a nasty and corrupt underworld. For a moment the unthinkable – that Brazil would fail to qualify for the 2002 World Cup – was a real possibility.
I understand the crisis as a reflection of more general tensions. Since the 1950s, when Pelé started playing, Brazil has gone from an overwhelmingly rural and illiterate country to an urban and literate one. It has passed through two decades of dictatorship and is learning, sometimes uncomfortably, about how to create a new society.
Meanwhile, the world is different. Football is also different. The only constant seems to be the magic we still invest in Brazil's golden yellow shirts.
I followed the parliamentary investigations closely. I flew to Brasilia to see the hearings. I was there when Ronaldo was called to give evidence. He was being asked to explain to Congressmen why Brazil were only second best in the 1998 World Cup.
'There are many truths,' the footballer told his interrogators. He said he would give 'his truth', and that he hoped it pleased them. But whether or not it was the 'true truth' – well, that was up to them.
I immediately scribbled this down in my notebook. I thought it was the most unintentionally observant comment any footballer has ever made.
Brazil has many 'truths'. This book is my search for the 'true truth' of Brazilian football. I hope it pleases you.
Alex Bellos
Rio de Janeiro
November 2001