Car­la Rauseo

Some friends watch foot­ball for its aes­thet­ic ap­peal, thrilled at the tight jer­seys high­light­ing out­lines of chis­eled bod­ies topped with mo­hawks and paint­ed with tat­toos, and oth­ers ad­mire the fit­ness and tech­ni­cal skills of the ath­letes. While I ap­pre­ci­ate these as well, I watch the World Cup most­ly for dif­fer­ent rea­sons.

It all be­gan with Cos­ta Ri­ca's first match against Uruguay, and a star Cos­ta Ri­can play­er called Joel Camp­bell. "Joel Camp­bell? A Cos­ta Ri­can? De­spite the Scot­tish ori­gin of "Camp­bell," his name sounds very West In­di­an. He even looks like a West In­di­an!" I thought in my ig­no­rance. I won­dered how some­one like him end­ed up play­ing foot­ball for Cos­ta Ri­ca, and so start­ed my re­search in­to the de­mo­graph­ics and eth­nic his­to­ry of these foot­ball gi­ants of the world.

While I was un­able to find any de­fin­i­tive in­for­ma­tion on Joel Camp­bell's an­ces­try, I did learn that in the 1800's fish­er­men from the Caribbean set­tled on the east­ern coast of Cos­ta Ri­ca dur­ing fish­ing sea­son. Al­so, there was an em­ploy­ment cri­sis in Ja­maica in the late 1800's that co­in­cid­ed with a scarci­ty of labour in Cos­ta Ri­ca dur­ing a pe­ri­od of high cof­fee de­mand. As a re­sult, many Ja­maicans mi­grat­ed to Cos­ta Ri­ca and end­ed up es­tab­lish­ing fam­i­lies. In fact, I was sur­prised to learn that Eng­lish is spo­ken along most of the east coast of Cos­ta Ri­ca.

The Cos­ta Ri­can team al­so re­flects the eth­nic make up of the coun­try. As with the foot­ball team, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 85 per­cent of the Cos­ta Ri­can pop­u­la­tion in­cludes mes­ti­zos (some­one who is half Eu­ro­pean and half Amerindi­an), cas­ti­zos (75 per cent Eu­ro­pean and 25 per­cent Amerindi­an) and white. Afro Cos­ta Ri­cans rep­re­sent a small­er per­cent­age and this is re­flect­ed in their team.

Like­wise, the Ar­gen­tin­ian and Uruguayan foot­ball teams rep­re­sent their re­spec­tive coun­try's eth­nic char­ac­ter­is­tics, which re­flects their rich his­to­ry of Eu­ro­pean im­mi­gra­tion. The Eu­ro­pean teams like France, Eng­land, Ger­many and the Nether­lands al­so re­flect mi­gra­tion, but pri­mar­i­ly from African and Caribbean coun­tries.

Brazil's foot­ball team, on the oth­er hand, is not rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the coun­try's pop­u­la­tion, and nei­ther are the Brazil­ian fans that fill the stands.

In fact, they bet­ter rep­re­sent the po­lit­i­cal dis­si­dence oc­cur­ring with­in the coun­try. Brazil has a high­ly di­verse pop­u­la­tion, but un­for­tu­nate­ly race and wealth seem close­ly linked and this is re­flect­ed in the colour of the fans in the stands. Tick­ets have been too high­ly priced for the low in­come cit­i­zens to af­ford, and they have had to watch the games at street par­ties rather than in the sta­di­um. It is so bad, that one Brazil­ian re­marked, "You will count more black peo­ple on the field than in all the stands. It's Fi­fa apartheid." From what I have seen on tele­vi­sion, this looks to be true. The Brazil­ian fans in the stands are al­most en­tire­ly white, al­though 54 per­cent of Brazil­ians iden­ti­fy as black or mixed race.

Rather than cel­e­brate Brazil­ian di­ver­si­ty, the World Cup has done quite the op­po­site, high­light­ing the cor­rup­tion in both the coun­try and with­in Fi­fa. Fi­fa de­fend­ed it­self say­ing that it do­nat­ed hun­dreds of thou­sands of tick­ets to builders of the sta­di­ums, in­dige­nous peo­ple and ben­e­fi­cia­ries of so­cial wel­fare pro­grams. How­ev­er these were on­ly three per­cent of to­tal tick­ets. Al­most all the sales were done through the in­ter­net. Buy­ers had to be pre­pared to fly great dis­tances to get to the game for which they had tick­ets. Poor peo­ple can­not af­ford the cost of trav­el, and are there­fore un­able to do this.

Foot­ball is part of the Brazil­ian iden­ti­ty and Brazil­ian foot­ball has a cul­ture. Fi­fa has re­placed cheap stand­ing room sec­tions with ex­pen­sive seats and stopped low in­come ven­dors, who are most­ly black, from sell­ing their goods in the streets out­side the sta­di­ums. Ac­cord­ing to a Brazil­ian ac­tivist, "Fi­fa has im­posed a norm for sta­di­ums that left Brazil less Brazil­ian." For me, the dis­ap­point­ing part of this is that Brazil has al­lowed it. Fi­fa has so much pow­er it can make coun­tries change their cul­ture and stan­dards, for the worse.

Fi­fa seems to be mak­ing foot­ball a sport for the elite to en­joy, a Wim­ble­don match of sorts. Bring out your spot of tea as you sit qui­et­ly and watch Brazil play Ar­genti­na! Sounds ridicu­lous, doesn't it? The rich on­look­ers don't know the Brazil­ian songs to sup­port their team. The irony is that the play­ers on the field are black or mixed, and the av­er­age Brazil­ian, who knows these songs, is un­able to watch them play in per­son.

The team has lost the pres­ence of their sup­port. How will this af­fect the ath­letes, giv­en the ex­treme pres­sure they face to win on home soil? It seems that Brazil has cut off its nose to spite its face, and this World Cup has giv­en me more than just foot­ball and great legs to think about.

Car­la Rauseo, DPT, CSCS is a Doc­tor of Phys­i­cal Ther­a­py and a cer­ti­fied Strength and Con­di­tion­ing Spe­cial­ist at To­tal Re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion Cen­tre in San Juan.

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