JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, July 24, 2025

Dirt Un­der the Nails

Reflections on diversity, politics and football

by

20140703

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.

?


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored