"Les rois du football": Forging Brazilian Nationalism on European Playing Fields

In 1925, Brazilian football was in crisis, as social and ethnic undesirables began to encroach on playing fields previously reserved for wealthy whites.  In an attempt to reassert the primacy of an elitist and Eurocentric vision of proper sporting practice, the leading São Paulo club, Paulistano, organized a European tour, the first by a Brazilian football team.  At first glance it seemed that the club achieved its objectives during its forty-three days in France, Switzerland, and Portugal: so well did the Brazilians play that they were crowned “the kings of football” by one French periodical, and their exploits were fêted throughout Brazil.  However, by defeating Europeans on European fields, and by doing so with an attractive, attacking style that helped define a characteristically Brazilian style of play, Paulistano had encouraged Brazilians of all classes and colors to see themselves as the masters of the European sport.  Moreover, this notion carried the imprimatur of Brazilians’ erstwhile teachers, the Frenchmen and other Europeans who marveled at the footballing abilities of the new “kings.”  Thus, paradoxically, a continuing concern among Brazilians for European attitudes and opinions helped make it increasingly difficult for clubs like Paulistano to defend their elitist sensibility and Eurocentric exclusiveness.  Indeed, in 1930, only five years after its overseas apotheosis, the club took the momentous decision of withdrawing from competitive football altogether rather than accepting the rising tide of social and ethnic inclusion in local sport.  The tide itself, however, could not be turned, as the experience of the 1925 tour and its reading by different observers had already helped popularize a contested, sport-centered cultural nationalism that, in turn, had powerful implications for how Brazilians understood class and ethnicity.