Courtesy: EASports
Fútbol’s World Cup stands alone, the Mount Everest of competitive sports. It’s not like our “World” Series—something that isn’t. The World Cup actually befits its name—thirty-two countries participate. And people are engaged around the world: three-quarters of a billion people in over two hundred countries will watch the final game. The World Cup connects North and South, Asia and Europe, the affluent and impoverished—literally everybody, everywhere, and unlike no other.
There’s joy. There’s anguish. Sometimes both…almost always both…as the games unfold. What else would you expect? National pride is at stake. It’s about being “the best of the best” in this game of the world. The recipe is simple yet profound: one ball, two nets, and global supremacy.
But this year’s Cup isn’t about soccer alone. It’s also about FIFA—the Fédération Internationale de Football Association—soccer’s governing body. FIFA is that and much more. It’s a transnational corporation, demanding and controlling national compliance as it cross cuts the world generally unfettered. Countries oblige economically for the right to host the games. This time it is Brazil’s turn to genuflect.
All of this is the backdrop for Dave Zirin’s new book—just released—Brazil’s Dance with the Devil: The World Cup, The Olympics, and the Fight for Democracy (Haymarket Books). Zirin, an accomplished and award-winning socio-political commentator, focuses on social issues in sports.
You can’t come in contact with Zirin’s work—reading him (in The Nation and Edge of Sports) or watching him (on Democracy Now! & Consider This)—without getting a headache. It comes from shaking your head back and forth… hard … in utter disbelief about what’s happening and why. Incredulity can turn to outrage: “What are they doing? “How could this be?” “What the hell!”
This book has the same outcome.
To understand the games in Brazil you have to understand the history of soccer; how countries relate to the game; FIFA; Brazil; and the evolution of corporatized sports. Zirin addresses all of those matters—and more—by weaving an interdisciplinary quilt. He draws on history, economics, sociology, anthropology, psychology, geography, and political science to make a compelling case for why things are as they are. And he doesn’t stop with analysis. He asks: What’s right? What’s proper? What’s the moral thing to do?
Zirin is a populist. His work resides at the interface of democracy and plutocracy. How can we enable peoples’ socio-economic fulfillment and their right to justice in the face of super-rich people (and associated institutions) using wealth, power, and connections to fuel narcissistic indulgences?
In his book Zirin describes why challenges bubbling up today in Brazil have existed in the world of international competition for a very long time. It’s not only with FIFA, but also with the Olympics and the IOC (International Olympic Committee), going all the way back to the Olympic (Berlin) Games of 1936 if not before. (Zirin’s analysis of Avery Brundage is a real head-shaker.)
But this time it’s different (similar only to what happened in Mexico before the Olympic Games of 1968): everyday people are hitting the streets, protesting, well before The Games start. They don’t like what their government is doing: spending gobs of money to create a “FIFA quality” environment (a sarcastic reference in Brazil).
The Games will cost the country an estimated $11 billion dollars and will probably cost more (Zirin estimates as much as $15 billion). This is the most expensive World Cup in history, a cost enhanced by the distribution of soccer sites (games are being played in twelve cities across the country). The price is huge and Brazil can’t afford it.
Courtesy: soccerdesk.com
Building and reconfiguring stadiums, constructing luxury boxes, and putting in place ancillary services (e.g., transportation) have come at the cost—of severely constricting national investments in education, health care, transportation, and other public services. People are being displaced from homes to build facilities and amenities, too (Zirin estimates over 200,000 across Brazil). There are strikes, mass gatherings, and public outcry. The world bears witness to national distress.
“Brazilian police fire tear gas at World Cup protesters” (CNN, June 12)
“Protesters hobble Brazil days before World Cup kicks off” (mySanAntonio.com, June 11)
“World Cup worries grow amid violent Brazil protests” (NBCNews.com, June 11)
“Brazil braces for uneasy start to World Cup as strikers’ protests hit São Paulo (The Guardian, June 9).
Googling “World Cup protests Brazil” (on June 12) returned about 430,000 results.
Even in soccer-mad Brazil there’s wavering support. A recent national poll conducted by The Pew Research Center revealed that over 60% of Brazilians do not support The World Cup being played there. And there’s a hashtag repository on Twitter labeled #NoYoyABrasilPorque (“I am not going to Brazil because….): “I love football, but I do not love the World Cup of Inequality in Brazil.” “While half the planet looks the other way I cannot do so.” “Brazil needs good education and health….”
A street sweeper put the situation in context. He told Zirin: “So the rich and the powerful walk on their red carpet, and they’re not looking at what’s going on. Critical people need to lift up the carpet to look at what’s underneath.”
That’s what Zirin does: he lifts up the carpet. His conclusion: “Throw FIFA Out of the Game” (the title of his opinion piece published in The New York Times, 6/6/14). He writes: “Finally, the world is seeing FIFA for what it is: a stateless conglomerate that takes bribes while acting as a battering ram for world leaders who want to use the majesty of the World Cup to push through their development agendas at great human cost.”
The Games convert national landscapes into “luxury goods” (in Zirin’s words) for people to enjoy during The Games. It’s “celebration capitalism,” as Zirin puts it: huge investments are made to get a country ready to host. Almost nothing stands in the way, politically, because the reason is so compelling: “The world will be watching.” It means normal operating rules are changed to accommodate preparations.
At what cost, though? That’s really the focus of Zirin’s book. He concludes the cost is too high. The Games deflect attention away from meeting national needs as those at the bottom are hard hit: they pay the price while others benefit handsomely. Brazil isn’t the first place that has happened, an outcome Zirin documents by revisiting the history of World Cup and Olympic games.
According to Zirin neoliberal economics is a root cause. That philosophy supports open markets, free trade, privitization, and reductions in government investment to enhance the standing and strength of the private sector. It’s the wealth-creating strategy heralded by Ronald Reagan in the ‘80s. Morphed into variations before and since it’s assisted from time to time by crises that enable proponents to recalibrate dramatically the way things are done (e.g., allowing charter schools to replace the public school system in New Orleans following Hurricane Katrina). But Zirin views neoliberalism as a Trojan Horse: Beware of what emerges.
Courtesy: UMN.edu
“Brazil’s Dance with the Devil” is a must-read book. It reveals what you won’t see by simply watching The Games. Good critique does that always. In this case it provokes an important question: Are we willing to align sporting expectations to support the aims of social and economic justice? That’s not a question for The World Cup alone. It applies elsewhere too (e.g., NCAA). As Zirin puts it, “the party has a price.”
The answer—as I see it—is that we need peoples’ protests to fuel institutional reform. Bribery allocations associated with planning the 2022 games in Qatar should simply fan the fires of change (see bloomberg.com 6/9/14).
The most important outcome of World Cup ’14 won’t be which country wins. It will be to end FIFA’s neoliberal model of celebration capitalism. Deixe a gente ser condenada não mais! (Let the people be damned no more!)
