Brazil's ugly game

World Cup shouldn't distract from corruption fight

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By Simon Hooper, CNNSI.com

Brazil’s fifth World Cup success has been celebrated around the globe as a victory for the “beautiful game.” The irony is that while Ronaldo and the rest of the Selecao may have restored their country’s reputation on the pitch, Brazilian soccer remains as ugly as ever.

A little over a month ago, Brazil’s World Cup preparations were overshadowed by the team’s dismal qualifying campaign and the lingering bad smell of a parliamentary inquiry into the state of Brazilian soccer that had damned the Brazilian Football Confederation and incriminated many within the sport’s hierarchy.

Expectations for the forthcoming World Cup campaign had never been lower and former greats such as Tostao and Socrates even went so far as to say that a poor performance at the World Cup might be the shock Brazil needed to purge its national obsession of corruption.

“The Brazilian Football Confederation is truly a den of crime, disorganization, anarchy, incompetence and dishonesty,” concluded Senator Alvaro Dias in December, at the end of the 14-month inquiry into the state of Brazilian soccer that included appearances by Ronaldo and former national team coach Mario Zagallo in front of Congress.

The inquiry recommended that 17 people should face criminal charges. Top of that list was Ricardo Texeira, the CBF’s president, accused of stealing hundreds of thousands of dollars. Other prominent names included former Brazilian coach Wanderley Luxemburgo, Eurico Miranda and Edmundo Silva, the presidents of popular Rio clubs Vasco da Gama and Flamengo, and Ronaldo’s agent Reinaldo Pitta.

Yet so far the CBF, a throwback to the political culture of Brazil’s dictatorship between 1964 and 1984, has remained impervious to criticism and beyond the reach of prosecutors. Texeira -– the son in law of former FIFA president Joao Havelange -- has even been discussed as a possible successor to Sepp Blatter.

Efforts have been made to clean up Brazilian soccer before, but the job proved beyond even Pele, Brazil’s greatest-ever player, who attempted to modernize the way clubs were run by forcing them to adhere to commercial business models when he was Brazil’s sports minister between 1994 and 1997. But the legislation was sabotaged by the CBF, one of Brazil’s most powerful political lobby groups, and the eventual legislation, known as the “Pele Law”, was so watered down Pele said he wanted nothing to do with it.

It was only with the trauma of Brazil’s defeat by France in 1998, its elimination by Cameroon at the 2000 Olympics and an unprecedented series of losses in World Cup qualifying that the parliamentary campaign to clean up soccer gathered momentum.

Fortunately Brazil’s president Fernando Henrique Cardoso, who faces an election in October, has shown a willingness to take on the vested interests in charge of soccer. In the build-up to the World Cup he passed a bill forcing clubs to become companies and abide by regular business regulations, in effect reviving the spirit of the original “Pele Law.”

With politicians such as president Cardoso and star players such as Ronaldo leading the way, Brazil must now make sure the World Cup is not used as an excuse to sweep the culture of corruption back under the carpet.

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Ronaldo Who else? Oliver Kahn Ditto.

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