By Mario Osava
RIO DE JANEIRO, Jan 26 2000 (IPS)

This year’s selection of Player of the Year by FIFA, the internacional football federation, confirmed an unfair trend in the most democratic of all team sports: the dictatorship of the goal-makers.

Only those who score the goals win the right to be stars, and as a result they monopolise the multi-million-dollar salaries. Thus the imbalance between teamwork and individuality has grown within what was once a truly collective sport.

It is a law of show-business, but in cinema the festivals and competitions, such as the US Oscar awards, at least grant prizes to the co-stars, opening the way to one day receive top billing.

The award FIFA granted Monday in Brussels to Brazil’s Rivaldo, who plays for the Barcelona club in Spain, appeared to be more than fair. He won with a broad advantage, 543 points compared to the 194 of the second-place player, Britain’s Davic Bakham, of Manchester United.

This result represents near unanimity in an arena that is normally sharply divided by nationalisms and deeply ingrained team fervour. But it also consolidates the division of classes that has been developing within football, benefitting the goal-makers and hurting the rest of the players.

Both Rivaldo and Bekham, and third-place player Gabriel Batituta, an Argentine who plays for the Italian club Fiorentina, are recognised and valued for the number of goals they convert, and secondly, for the ones they “serve” to their teammates.

Of the eight who have been chosen FIFA Player of the Year since the award began in 1991, seven have been top point scorers. The exception was the first to receive the honour, Germany’s Lothar Matthaus, a mid-fielder who kept his team, and its plays, organised.

The two Brazilians who preceded Rivaldo at the top, Romario in 1994 and Ronaldinho in 1996 and 1997, are efficient goal-makers. In the globalised market, they constitute the kind of player with high and growing pay, 10 times greater, or more, than that of the best defender.

In the current situation, it is unimaginable that a defender or a goalie could be recognised as the “best player,” not even within the region or country where he plays, no matter how decisive he has been in his team’s victories. They are workers condemned to sweat in support of their forwards.

Football has democratic traits that are hard to find in other sports, and probably explain its vast popularity. The sport is not as discriminatory as, for example, basketball or volleyball, where players of short stature are completely excluded.

An anti-athletic physique did not prevent the Argentine Diego Maradona from reaching the number-one spot for several years, using his left-handed abilities. Short people like Romario have shined in all of the games positions, except in the goal.

The sports authorities would reduce the level of unfairness in the athletic world if they would establish categories for height in basketball, volleyball and the high jump, as is done with weight in boxing and wrestling.

If they do not take such measures, the cases of social ascent through sport, which are the rule in football, will continue to be few and far between.

The poor rarely achieve the height and strength of individuals from wealthier sectors of the population, at the age when professional athletes are scouted, which is younger every day.

But in football, the reverse is true, at least in developing countries or where there are serious inequalities, like Brazil. Most of the players come from the class of the dispossessed.

Rivaldo, as much as Romario, is such an example. Son of a poor family from Paulista, a city in the northeastern Brazil, he suffered malnutrition that almost cost him his career.

Lacking the muscle-build for his height (1.86 m), he seemed too thin and gawky for such a competitive sport. When he was an adolescent and tried to enter the professional world of football, a coach rejected him because he was always falling down, unable to stand up to the physical contact of the game.

His looks did not help – he was missing his front teeth. The defect has since been corrected with a prosthesis.

Luckily, he was transferred to a team that was better able to use his talents, the Mogi-Mirím in Sao Paulo state. There, thanks to good nutrition and physical training, he was able to develop his previously hidden abilities.

Rivaldo, who costs 70 million dollars, recognises that his talented Barcelona teammates played a decisive role in his being chosen as Player of the Year 1999. “I am lucky to play on a great team that allows me to shine and win awards,” he said.

But this brings up another discriminatory aspect of the FIFA prize. No player has a chance of winning if they play outside the wealthy European leagues, especially if they are not in Italy or Spain.

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