Giant and discredited, tournament in Brazil for 50 years helped shape current football

Not many remember. The title is not among the great achievements of Brazil, five-time world champion. But 50 years ago, on July 9, 1972, 100,000 people went to Maracanã to see the green-yellow team defeat Portugal 1-0, with a goal scored in the 44th minute of the second half.

The hard-fought triumph in Rio de Janeiro, obtained from a cross by Rivellino and a header by Jairzinho, earned him the title of the Independence Cup. Known as the Mini Cup, the competition celebrated 150 years of Brazilian emancipation – which made the victory over the Portuguese in the decision emblematic – and was part of a multi-layered political game.

One of them was the use that the dictatorship made of sport in the construction of the “big Brazil”, particularly during the government of Emílio Garrastazu Médici (1969-1974), a frequent figure in the Mario Filho stadium with his battery-operated radio. In the military regime’s national integration project, football played an important role, and a tournament with 12 venues and 20 teams had symbolic value.

The 20 teams had more than symbolic value for João Havelange, then 56 years old, president of the CBD (Brazilian Sports Confederation, current CBF). The gigantism of the dispute – the 1970 World Cup had 16 participants – and the opening to centers of the sporting world that felt under-represented were assets in his candidacy to take over FIFA.

Havelange would in fact, in 1974, win the election for the presidency of the governing body of football, with a narrow margin over his predecessor, the Englishman Stanley Rous. It is no exaggeration to say that their triumph was obtained with the votes of national federations raised in the Mini-Cup, whose list of teams included a selection of African athletes and another of Central Americans.

The entire organization was carried out in a campaign atmosphere. While Brazil followed its eternal pattern of building and rebuilding stadiums, several of them in the Northeast, Havelange travels inviting teams. He even celebrated the confirmed presence of all the world champions – which, at that moment, in addition to Brazil, were Uruguay, Italy, West Germany and England.

But the then FIFA president, even though he had endorsed the Mini-Cup and praised the fields prepared for it, was trying to be re-elected in a dispute with Havelange. And the main federations in Europe, Rous’ stronghold, were little by little boycotting the event, with unconvincing justifications for problems on the agenda.

“My candidacy is bothering a lot of people”, said the CBD president, as published by the Sheet on May 23, 1972. At the same time, he tried to pretend that absences didn’t bother him and that he would be compensated accordingly. In the end, Italy, West Germany, England and also Spain, announced as a replacement, did not appear.

Rous, however, although he behaved as a rival to Havelange in the dispute for the command of FIFA, fulfilled his role as the entity’s representative and gave strength, in the domestic environment of Brazil, to the president of the CBD and his allies. In the courteous preparatory visits, the applause was extended to the military regime.

“In all the states of the country, I felt that the people of these regions have in their stadium a symbol of pride, which only good can bring about. This is great for young people to practice all kinds of sports. subversion and others”, said the Englishman, warning, five decades ago, that pantry and mini pantry are not made with hospitals (or churches).

“In my country, for example, dozens of years ago, when people thought of building a big stadium, they built a cathedral. Now, when hardly anyone goes to church anymore, big sports plazas may appear instead of cathedrals, because the population is already preferring the stadiums, as here in Brazil”, he added.

The sentences, published in Sheet on August 7, 1971, were in the context of the “economic miracle”, a relatively short period in which Brazil had record rates of growth and indebtedness, which took their toll with interest and inflation. This context included major works, such as the construction of the Trans-Amazonian highway and the Rio-Niterói bridge.

In football, this took place, literally, in stadiums. The 12 Mini Cup venues were divided into all five regions. And the Northeast – an important part of the national integration plan – experienced a kind of “stadium boom”. On the eve of the Independence Cup, Arruda (Recife), Machadão (Natal), Rei Pelé (Maceió) and Batistão (Aracaju) were born.

The new Vivaldão (Manaus), in the North region, and Morenão (Campo Grande), in the Center-West region, were also among the stages of a championship that had the government as a partner. In the first phase, when the public presence was very weak, Médici agreed to pay for the displacement of the delegations. Tickets were donated to students, and Beetles were raffled off to attract an audience.

“The Cup was mobilized as a way of reinforcing the ideal of ‘big Brazil'”, observes researcher Bruno Duarte Rei, in the article “Independence Cup (1972): football in Brazil in times of ‘miracle'”. “The military dictatorship also sought to profit, notably from a symbolic point of view, from the tournament,” he adds.

The CBD, in the figure of Havelange, was a partner of the regime. In a letter sent to the Presidency of the Republic regarding the event, the confederation declared itself committed to “a work of national integration through football”. The competition would be, said João, “another link for the integration of the country, which is going through a phase of development”.

It can be said that the objectives were achieved. The sporting event was emptied, discredited by important teams, and had a weak audience in the first phase, but the stadiums were already standing, and the presence in the stands was increasing. The Brazilian team entered the second stage and contributed to the growth to about 100 thousand spectators of the decision.

The national team no longer had Pelé, who said goodbye to it in 1971, frustrating Havelange by refusing to play in the Mini-Cup. But that didn’t stop the manager from getting the votes he needed to win the FIFA election. Sworn in in 1974, he remained president until 1998, a period in which he made his mark.

“I arrived to completely change how FIFA works. I arrived to sell a product called football”, said the carioca, under whose command the entity became a billionaire and globalized company. Died in 2016 at the age of 100, he liked to say he was given the safe with $20 and left $4 billion in future earnings.

In this movement, he made the World Cup jump from 16 participants to 32. Untraditional markets for the sport were reached, such as the United States and East Asia. The Brazilian began to behave almost like a head of state, bragging about the power and money he had in his hands.

“When I go to Saudi Arabia, King Fahd welcomes me splendidly,” he said in an interview published in the book “How They Stole the Game” (1998), by David Yallop. “This is respect. This is FIFA’s strength. I talk to all presidents, but they also talk to a president of equal status. They have their power, and I have mine: the power of football.”

As is often the case in power, there have been corruption scandals, the most famous of which are linked to the ISL, a FIFA marketing company accused of providing officials with bribes. Upon leaving the presidency, João left a successor, Joseph Blatter, who followed his business model and territorial expansion – in 2010, there was the first World Cup in Africa.

New scandals ended up bringing down the Swiss, replaced in 2016 by a compatriot. Now it is Gianni Infantino who leads football in the Havelange way. This year’s World Cup will be in Qatar. The next one, divided between the United States, Mexico and Canada, will have 48 teams and an odd regulation to accommodate them.

More or less as it was with the 20 teams from the 1972 Mini Cup. While five were waiting, pre-qualified, the other 15 were divided into three groups: Argentina, France, Africa (selected from the continent), Colombia, Concacaf (selected from Central America), Portugal, Chile, Ireland, Ecuador, Iran, Yugoslavia, Paraguay, Peru, Bolivia and Venezuela.

Winners of their brackets, Argentina, Portugal and Yugoslavia were joined by Brazil, Scotland, Czechoslovakia, the Soviet Union and Uruguay. These eight teams were again divided into two groups, and the champion of each advanced to the final. That was how Brazilians and Portuguese met on that July 9, a confrontation decided by Jairzinho.

In the tribune of honor at Maracanã, Emílio Garrastazu Médici handed the Independence Cup to Gerson, saying: “You have just brought great joy to Brazil”. “After that,” reported the Sheet, “a glass of French champagne was served”. “Medici took a sip of the cup and passed it to Havelange”, who went on to sell his product and make football a billion-dollar business.