SPORTS-BRAZIL: The End of ‘Slavery’ in Football

By Mario Osava Reprint | | Print |

Mario Osava

RIO DE JANEIRO, Mar 14 2001 (IPS) - The reorganisation of football business dealings in Brazil, with the end of the transfer system that ties players to a particular club, will reflect the rules adopted in Europe, the world’s biggest market for the sport, which dictates the “laws” that end up governing football.

A new Brazilian law to go into effect on the 26th will put an end to the “slavery” represented by the transfer system, which keeps a player from moving on to his team of choice after his last contract expires, Brazil’s minister of Sports and Tourism, Carlos Melles, said Wednesday.

The new law is aimed at radically restructuring the football business by freeing up players and forcing clubs to abandon their facade as non-profit entities and become companies subject to economic regulations.

In practice, however, little will change, and the controversy will continue to rage among players’ unions, clubs and sports journalists, who do not limit their job to informing, but express opinions and exercise a direct influence over football.

It will be simply a “transition,” because the situation is improving, but further changes will be needed within a few years, said Juca Kfouri, one of Brazil’s leading sports reporters.

But the resistance to change is strong. The new law was heavily modified before it made it through Congress in 1998, to the point that it was criticised by the author of the original bill, football legend Pelé (Edson Arantes do Nascimento), then-minister of sports.

Furthermore, it took three years for the law to be put into effect.

Its implementation as of this month was only made possible by the adoption of new rules in Europe, which paved the way for an agreement in Brazil between the government, football authorities and Pelé himself.

According to the agreement, reached Tuesday in Brasilia, the “Pelé Law” will go into effect, but newly modified by a “provisional measure” (a Brazilian law-decree) which ensures indemnification for clubs that discover and train talented young players, and catapult them into the limelight.

The right to indemnification will apply to clubs whose players are transferred before their 23rd birthday. Five percent of the compensation paid through that mechanism – a vestige of the traditional “transfer” – will go into a fund that will support the smaller clubs, dedicated to grooming fresh talent.

Footballers ranging in age from 23 to 28 will not be able to unilaterally break off their contracts for a period of three years, which is reduced to two years after that age. Fines and sanctions, such as a temporary suspension from playing, will be applied in case of breach of contract.

The rules were agreed on Mar 5 by the European Football Union and the International Football Federation (FIFA), which also limits transfers to periods of the year during which the main tournaments are played.

To discourage international trafficking in promising adolescent players, Europeans set a minimum age limit of 18 for hiring footballers from other countries, while allowing exceptions in cases in which agreement has been reached by all of the concerned parties.

Specific norms for the world of football are justified, because it is a special profession, according to a judge of the Higher Court of Labour, Almir Pazzianotto, a former labour minister.

It is the player’s talent that draws crowds to the stadium and keeps viewers glued to the TV screen – which has nothing to do with the quality of a product that does not depend on the worker, he argued.

But critics reject such arguments, and maintain that all that is needed is the contract, which already provides for compensation in case of breach of contract, like in other areas of entertainment and show business.

What was approved now is “merely a palliative” which fails to resolve the underlying question, because it tends to leave in place the distortion created by intermediaries who broker transfers and act as the players’ “owners,” said Kfouri.

But what happens in Europe tends to be followed in the rest of the world, admits Pazzianotto and other observers. Rich European teams hire the best players in the world.

Without a mechanism to protect Latin American or African clubs, or even clubs in rich countries without a highly developed football culture, like the United States or the Netherlands, the imbalance will only be aggravated. Spanish and Italian teams, for example, will have an even easier time getting a corner on the best young talent.

The Brazilian agreement on a limited restructuring of the football business was also a consequence of the pressure exercised by parliamentary probes into irregularities like corruption, the falsification of passports for the “sale” of players to the European Union, and the trafficking of teenagers.

The solution that has been reached has hurt Pelé’s image, because he not only ended up accepting measures to which he was opposed until recently, but he became reconciled with the president of the Brazilian Football Confederation, Ricardo Teixeira, and other leaders he accused of corruption in the past.

“He acted like a businessman, not like the player he was,” complained Sócrates Brasileiro de Oliveira, the star of Brazil’s national team in 1982, referring to Pelé’s new role as the owner of a sports-related company.