The Maracanã, like a duomo, is filled with memorials to heroes, martyrs, and its patron saint, Pelé. It was here that he scored his thousandth goal on November 19, 1969. And it was here, in 1961, as a plaque at the stadium’s entrance commemorates, that Pelé scored
“the most beautiful goal ever.” Collecting the ball in front of his own keeper, he traversed the length of the field. Without a pass, but many feints at passing, he juked his way past six separate defenders. The ball never really left his feet until he put it in the net. Like much of Pelé’s highlight reel—the time he dribbled HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE SURVIVAL OF THE TOP HATS
two circles around a Senegalese keeper, the eight goals he put past a top Rio club in a single game—it doesn’t exist on film, only in fading memories and folklore.
The lure of the Maracanã’s mythic past is so strong that three of Rio’s four teams have made it their home stadium. On a perfect August night at the beginning of a new season, I came to watch one of these storied clubs, Botafogo. I had expected one of the great sporting experiences. And the entrance didn’t disappoint.
You walk past a stretch of polished granite sidewalk, like the one in front of Mann’s Chinese Theater, with blocks dedicated to Brazil’s greatest players, coaches, and sportswriters. Well before the portal to the arena it is possible to hear the samba cadence of the drums.
The chants and drumbeat originate in a corner of the arena, just to the side of the goal. This is the curva, as the Italians call it. Across much of the Latin world, the curva is the traditional congregation of the exuberant clubs of supporters. They vigorously wave flags, at least ten feet tall, with slogans expressing undying allegiance to their beloved team. They spend all week composing new songs that they will use to taunt their opponent and champion their favorite players.
The Maracanã provides all the emotion that a fan could desire, except for one thing: company. Aside from the diehards in the curva, and a few dozen fans accompanying the visiting team who’ve been
sequestered in their own distant curva, for safety’s sake, there’s almost no one in the vast stadium. When the public address announcer lists the names of players, the echo in the stadium renders him incomprehensible. According to the figure thrown up on the score-board, a measly 4,000 have shown. This number is
sadly typical: thousands more fans attend the average soccer game in Columbus, Ohio, and Dallas, Texas, than in the top flight of the Brazilian league.
After one spends a little time in Rio, the reasons for this sparseness become obvious. Ubiquitous surveillance cameras have largely stamped out the thievery that used to lurk through the stadium, but the surrounding neighborhood is a shooting gallery. Trips to the bathroom mean splashing through pools of urine.
Often enough, the stench is apparent outside the bathrooms, too. Many Brazilian fans don’t want to risk missing any action on the pitch by making the long haul to the head. Maracanã recently renovated its infrastructure, not just to comply with new safety regulations, but also to reverse the corrosive e¤ects of urine on steel-reinforced concrete girders.
Perhaps the public could have su¤ered these indig-nities. But the rulers of the Brazilian game have committed sins beyond depriving fans of amenities. They have disorganized the game itself. Every year they concoct a di¤erent system for the league, a new calendar and formula for winning the championship. One season, revenue from ticket sales was factored into playo¤
qualification. Schedules become so cluttered with meaningless tournaments that players essentially never have an o¤-season.
A few seats away, at half-time of the Botafogo game, a man is reading a newspaper story about Ronaldo.
According to the piece, Real Madrid is trying to buy the bucktoothed striker o¤ Internazionale of Milan for $20
million. In Pelé’s day, the greatest Brazilian players HOW SOCCER EXPLAINS THE SURVIVAL OF THE TOP HATS
played in Brazil, and, therefore, Brazilian fans were treated to the greatest games on the planet. Now, even my most soccer mad friends in Brazil have a hard time naming the players on storied clubs like Botafogo. Of the twenty-two players who wore their country’s radioactive yellow jerseys in the World Cup, only seven currently play in their home country. An estimated 5,000 Brazilians have contracts with foreign teams. The exodus of Brazilian soccer play is one of the great migra-tions of talent in recent history, the sports equivalent of the post-Soviet brain drain or the flight of intellectuals from war-torn African countries. Brazilian heroes have become something like the war in Chechnya—distant and foreign, extant only in rare appearances for the national team and the dispatches of stringers.
V.
Well before President Cardoso named him to his cabinet, Pelé had maintained a cozy relationship with power. During the military dictatorship, he didn’t complain when the regime lifted his image for its propaganda. When asked about the generals’ unwillingness to hold elec-tions, he once replied that he considered Brazilians too stupid to vote. He’d even struck up a friendship with Henry Kissinger. The role of rebel and reformer hadn’t come naturally to Pelé, and he could only sustain it for so long. After using his prestige to shove his raft of anti-corruption, pro-capitalist reforms, the Pelé Laws, down the congress’s gullet in 1998, he resigned from the government, to return to his lucrative life as the smiling icon. But without the force of Pelé behind the Pelé Laws, the soccer lobby recovered the upper hand. Pelé’s laurels withered before he could rest upon them. Two years after his retirement, his
