Opinion – Renata Mendonça: Fear can drive away and transform fans’ relationship with Brazilian football

I remember when I first heard from a colleague in the newsroom: “My team is Real Madrid”. Okay, but what’s your real team? “Real Madrid.” Don’t you support any Brazilian team? “No.”

Between bewilderment and disdain, I went to my computer without understanding. A person passionate about sports to the point of working with it and who had simply “chosen” to support Real Madrid, a distant team, which this guy had probably never even seen play in the stadium. And would it be possible to cheer like this, really, without the experience of the stands?

Choosing a team is never exclusively individual, it is a bit collective as well. Because they are part of the context where you live, the influences you have at home, at school, in the city. For my part, I chose to support the same team as my father and I still remember my first experience at the stadium and everything that it awakened in me.

Except my dad didn’t take us to games often—and he had reason to. He was afraid. He handpicked the game that “we could go” and did all the planning for us to get there early and stay out of trouble. The fear was of violence, of crowd fights, of confrontations with the police and of finding himself alone having to run with two children to protect them from the stage of war that sometimes sets in stadiums.

When I went to a classic by myself for the first time, already in my youth, I only told him later, so as not to worry him. And the worst thing is that there was the rush he feared so much at the end of that game. A friend and I had to take cover at a gas station after running a lot through gas pumps.

Then I see the scenes from last Sunday at Castelão, on Ilha do Retiro and around the Arena da Baixada, and I understand how right my father was. I also understand the “Real Madrid fan” who doesn’t have a team in Brazil. In fact, children who support European teams have multiplied. Of course, it’s not just one factor that explains this, but Brazilian football has done a lot to distance itself from its fans.

Children getting sick and being carried by security. Invasion of cheerleading field to intimidate player. Firefighters being attacked in a cowardly manner – among them, a fallen woman who was kicked mercilessly.

Football is connection. And it’s hard to connect with a game that ends in beatings, threats, violence. A child today will like to see a Liverpool v Manchester City, with a Brazilian goalkeeper assisting Salah’s beautiful goal, a Real Madrid v Barcelona with a Brazilian striker scoring at the Bernabéu, or a Ceará v Cuiabá that ends with an invasion of the field. and threat to players?

What kind of thing are we teaching the little ones when we attribute the chaos seen on Ilha do Retiro to the celebration of a goal? What connection do we want a child to have with football when opposing fans are banned from entering a classic to avoid fights – and scenes of violence happen anyway?

There are no notes of repudiation, loss of field command or determination by single fans that solve a problem as serious as this. The images recorded each fan who invaded, assaulted or intimidated players in these three episodes, which, unfortunately, are far from isolated. Their accountability and punishment is the minimum necessary to combat this unacceptable violence.

The traumas of those who lived through these tragedies I don’t know if they will heal. Perhaps the children who were there and their families would prefer to stay at home cheering for Real Madrid instead of going back to a stand where they can’t know if they’re going to get out alive and unharmed.

I was lucky that fear led my father to ponder, but not to give up on taking me to the stadium. Perhaps today, in this context, his decision would be different.