Missed Opportunities

Football clubs in South America are sustained against all odds by passionate supporters and player exports. Tim Vickery reflects on the historic complacency of the region’s football authorities and their inability to exploit global interest.

September 2018

Almost fifteen years ago, São Paulo FC were bossing Brazilian football and the club was held up as a reference for being a well-run institution. I saw two of their executives give a lecture to an audience of coaches. They started with a list of the world’s best-supported clubs. It was topped by teams from Brazil and Mexico. The methodology was as follows: for Brazilian clubs they only counted fans in Brazil, for Mexicans it was just fans in Mexico, and so on. I sat back and ruminated on a clear conclusion – these people did not have the slightest understanding of their industry.

Professional football is a strange business. First, it walks a precarious tightrope between culture and business. Second, the aim is titles rather than profits. Third, the aim of a club is not to drive its competitors out of business. Clubs need each other. They are partners more than rivals. Yet if there is one area in which, given a chance, the game can act more in line with business orthodoxy, it is in the drive to maximise revenues. This has been evident in recent years with trends in ticket prices, with merchandising strategies, and especially with TV rights.

We underestimate the impact that TV has had on the game. It is a comparatively recent development. Anyone from England around my age (born in 1965) can easily recall decades in which the game was not a made-for-TV product. There were highlights on a Saturday evening or Sunday afternoon, but there was very little live football. True, you got an entire World Cup. Other than that, though, there was the FA Cup final – its very exclusivity as a TV event was what made it so special. There were a handful of England internationals, usually the European Cup final and occasionally the final of the UEFA Cup Winners’ Cup. And that was it.

Other countries were similarly slow to exploit the medium. In Brazil, for example, some live games were shown much earlier, in the mid-1960s. But the broadcasters paid nothing for the privilege. You did not have to be a genius to conclude that an opportunity was being missed here. Those opportunities kicked in during the 1980s and were consolidated in the ‘90s. Football became a TV event. This radically altered the business environment, and in turn changed the game on the pitch.

Previously the target audience for a game of football had been the, say, 40,000 people inside the stadium. They remained important – not just for the money they handed over in ticket prices, but even more crucially as providers of atmosphere, as participants in a spectacle whose target audience was now limitless. The event could be sold all around the world. This entailed the quest to provide a spectacle sufficiently enticing to attract the neutral. Those in the stadium were committed fans, who had grown up with their clubs. The new global audience did not have this characteristic. Over time, as we have seen, millions in Asia could develop an allegiance to Manchester United, Real Madrid or Barcelona. But first their attention had to be attracted by the quality of the spectacle.

Here, the big European clubs counted on a formidable ally: FIFA. Much earlier than the club game, the World Cup had become a massive TV event, with an audience all over the planet. FIFA were concerned about Italia ’90 – the competition with the lowest number of goals per game in the history of the World Cup. They took steps to promote attacking play, such as taking a hard line on the tackle from behind. These days players are sent off for offences which, some forty years ago, may not even have warranted a foul, let alone a disciplinary sanction. Talent is far more protected. The spectacle benefits.

Football benefits, too, from better pitches. Some England players from 1986 are especially in awe of the second goal that Diego Maradona scored against them in Mexico City because of the condition of the turf in Estadio Azteca – a ploughed field on which such ball control was an exceptional feat. Today’s stars get to play on carpets.

And so a virtuous circle is created. A better spectacle attracts more money, which can be invested in better players and facilities, thus enabling a better spectacle… and so on. But what if you are outside the magic circle? How to launch a new league, and build interest in local clubs, when people can stay at home and watch Real Madrid and Barcelona? This process has proved exceptionally hard even for club football in South America, whose roots could hardly go deeper in the fabric of its local societies.

The South American game has been rendered an export industry, selling off its most promising stars at an ever-younger age. This, understandably, gives rise to bitterness. The Europeans are blamed for having more money. Some of this blame is justified. Europe’s leading clubs love to pluck the fruit, but they are less keen on watering the plant. But some of the blame is misplaced. The economy of Spain has not been performing well. Real Madrid and Barcelona are able to get over this because their business model brings in revenue from elsewhere. South American football could have done this.

There were strong ties with Japan, for example. Brazilian legend Zico was the driving force in getting the J.League off the ground. And the South American champions always took it very seriously in the 1980s and ‘90s when they went to Japan to take on their European counterparts, who frequently treated the Intercontinental Cup – as it was known until 2004 – as an unwelcome jaunt. There was goodwill at a time when the South American club game still contained significant talent. Throw in the time zone factor, and it becomes clear that South American football missed a historic opportunity to capture a slice of Asia. The continent prides itself on its World Cup wins. But the inability to think in a global perspective – that clunky nationalist attitude in evidence from those São Paulo executives – proved a fatal weakness.

It is entirely possible that many of those running South American club football are happy with the current state of play. The global boom of football has inflated salaries in South America, leading to a necessity to sell players in order to balance the books – and this, in turn, creates opportunities for enrichment, licit and otherwise. In the twenty-four years I have been based in this part of the world, the local game has been hollowed out to an extraordinary degree. I well recall my first few matches in Brazil back in 1994. I could scarcely believe the depth of unknown talent – within a couple of months I was fortunate enough to see two Juninhos, Rivaldo, Roberto Carlos and many others climbing the stairway to greatness. A contemporary visitor would not be nearly so fortunate.

And yet the game goes on. While crowds may be seen as disappointing from some points of view, they are probably better than what the quality of the spectacle deserves. In the past month I have been to eleven games, almost all in Maracanã stadium in Rio de Janeiro. A couple of times the crowd has been below 10,000. But on seven occasions the attendance has been in excess of 30,000, with a couple of games attracting over 50,000. The quality has been generally poor. The number of goals is an unreliable guide, but it surely says something that in not one of the eleven matches did both sides manage to score.

And yet even in such conditions, in the midst of an economic crisis, football can still attract such attention. This is surely proof of a basic affirmation – that in an increasingly atomised, individualised era, the collective catharsis of football is more necessary than ever. And it also highlights one of the aspects of football that saves it as a business – football does not need to be good in order to be attractive. For those with an emotional involvement, a bad game can still provide an exciting spectacle. And even a bad spectacle can be rendered worthwhile by the sense of communion that it engenders. In very few other spheres of business can a bad experience be so good.

Words: Tim Vickery | Imagery: EiF; Imago