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This article was downloaded by: [McMaster University]On: 03 November 2014, At: 08:58Publisher: RoutledgeInforma Ltd Registered in England and Wales Registered Number: 1072954 Registeredoffice: Mortimer House, 37-41 Mortimer Street, London W1T 3JH, UK
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‘Styling’: Brazilian soccer, by SusanMilbyJorge Ventura De Morais aa Universidade Federal de Pernambuco , BrazilPublished online: 17 Mar 2011.
To cite this article: Jorge Ventura De Morais (2011) ‘Styling’: Brazilian soccer, by Susan Milby,Soccer & Society, 12:2, 314-316, DOI: 10.1080/14660970.2011.548455
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/14660970.2011.548455
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ations of the families of those involved would have been greatly useful. Finally, as theauthor declares the event to be ‘immortal’ and ‘momentous’ in the social history ofIndian sport, a discussion on its legacy would have enriched the work further.
Debashis SarkarFreelance Writer based in Kolkata, India
Email: [email protected]© 2011, Debashis Sarkar
‘Styling’: Brazilian soccer, by Susan Milby, Saarbrüken, Germany, VerlagDr. Müller, v + 386 pp., bibliography, £68.00/$111.00 (paperback), ISBN 978-3-639-17505-9.
Nelson Rodrigues, the famous Brazilian playwright and sports journalist, used to saythat Brazilian sociologists – a category in which he also included anthropologists andhistorians – were not very intelligent people. For him, these human scientistsneglected the most important social phenomenon in Brazil: soccer. So, when hewanted to say a bad word about somebody, he used to say: ‘X is as intelligent as asociologist’ to mean that X had a low level of intelligence.
Although, Brazilian social scientists have been increasingly paying attention tosoccer as an important social phenomenon in Brazil, the subject is still far behind othertopics considered worth researching in Brazilian universities. Thus, Milby’s book is awelcomed addition to an increasing effort by social scientists trying to understand therole of soccer in Brazilian society.
Brazilian soccer is known around the world as displaying a distinctive way ofplaying the game. Brazilian players, since Leônidas da Silva first appeared as a kindof hero in the 1938 World Cup Finals in France, have had much success due to theirskills and techniques. Milby’s aim is, no more no less, to analyse ‘the nuances thatshape Brazilian soccer style’ (p. 6).
Milby’s book is divided into 23 chapters which deal with those social factors shethinks can explain how our style was shaped. Thus, she goes through the history of thecountry, the national habitus and national identity, colonization, the sporting history,class, race, gender, globalization, etc. in order to achieve her aims.
First of all, Milby defines what she calls a ‘signatures of style.’ She points to sevensignatures: (1) tactics, (2) body image, (3) techniques, (4) a team’s concept of soccer,(5) values, (6) tradition, and (7) ecological impact. Then she goes on in the rest of thebook to show how these signatures have shaped the Brazilian soccer style through theanalysis of each of the topics referred to above.
Based mainly on literature in English, written by journalists and scholars (some ofthem Brazilians), and on the watching of games and films, Milby’s methodology didnot include interviews or an extensive analysis of Brazilian literature.
Although Milby’s effort is worth praising, I felt uneasy about her methodology. Infact, her subject of study is a very difficult one. In spite of this, she did not engageherself in an extensive fieldwork. Let me give an example: she says that she watched‘thousands of hours of games and films’, but this scarcely appears as evidence for herclaims about the Brazilian soccer style. Instead, she prefers to rely upon works mainlyby foreign writers. It is difficult to see how these sources alone could supply her withempirical data for such a difficult subject of study.
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Somehow, she addresses this point in the final pages of the book. It seems thatthere were critiques of her book similar to mine. She answers them by stating thathers was a literary analysis. However, my very point is this: her literary analysis isbased on a very narrow list of books. Did she use Roberto DaMatta’s and GilbertoFreyre’s works? Yes, she did. However, in the case of DaMatta, only three works arelisted in her bibliography. Indeed, his main work on soccer (Universo do Futebol)does not appear there. Consider, on the other hand, Gilberto Freyre’s role in what we,Brazilian scholars, name as Brazilian Social Thought. Freyre was the first Braziliansocial scientist to pay attention to soccer. Indeed, he tried to define the Brazilian stylein contradistinction to the European style. For him, we played a Dionysian stylewhich developed from the African dances, while the Europeans played an Apollonianstyle, a very rationalist way of playing the game. Somehow, Freyre (and others)defined how we came to see ourselves playing soccer in a very distinct way: thebeautiful game. However, this important analysis, which has been influential inBrazil, is referred to by Milby in a very short paragraph and Freyre is quoted fromAlex Bellos.
So, Freyre does not play any role in Milby’s analysis. However, he does appear inher bibliography. He is quoted once again on pages 45–46 and on page 51. But herehe is cited as quoted by Tony Mason in his Passion of the People? The most amazingaspect of all this is that Freyre’s main works, in which he repeats the general thesisreferred to above, are available in English.
Milby thinks that Bellos’s Futebol: The Brazilian Way of Life is a very goodintroduction to the history of Brazilian soccer. However, had she read AidanHamilton’s (An Entirely Different Game), she would not have written that thosecountries, like Brazil, which received British soccer developed a different style inorder to challenge British hegemony (p. 163). Hamilton shows that, in the Braziliancase, such a rationalist view finds no support. Our style, which includes avoidingbody contact, has to do with a very strict understanding of what body contactmeant. Had she read the famous Mario Filho, author of O Negro no FutebolBrasileiro, she would have learned that black players, such as Domingos da Guia,developed a unique style of dribbling, based on samba, in order to avoid contactwith white and stronger players for fear of being disrespectful towards thoseviewed as socially superior. So this has nothing to do with a romantic view of chal-lenging the British.
One last word about methodology. Throughout the book, Milby sometimes refersto German soccer. I was unable to find a methodological reason for this. She does notsay whether hers is a comparative analysis or whether Germany was introduced forthe sake of illustrating a different path.
Finally, the book should have been submitted to a rigorous revision before goingto press. There are some awful mistakes. Let me give just some examples. (1) On page52, she says rightly that Brazil has won five World Cups; however, she goes on to saythat Germany is the first runner-up. Clearly, she forgot Italy, champions in 1934,1938, 1982 and 2006. (2) On page 104, she says that Brasília, the Brazilian capitalcity, was inaugurated on the following day after Brazil won the World Cup in Swedenin 1958. Indeed, Brasília was inaugurated two years later in 1960. (3) Speaking aboutBrazil in the Mexico World Cup in 1970, she says that ‘coach Saldanha had beenreplaced by coach Zagalo, and in turn he was replaced by Coutinho’ (pp. 108–109).This is not true! Zagalo was the Brazilian coach in 1970 and 1974. Coutinho replacedhim in 1978. Indeed, Milby contradicts herself by giving the right information on page
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188. (4) Finally, on page 116, referring to Brazil performance in Italy World Cup in1990, she says that Brazil was eliminated by Argentina with a goal by Maradona.Well, I watched this match. Claudio Caniggia, after receiving a Maradona’s pass,scored the winning goal. There are other mistakes, but it would be tiring to list themall here.
Jorge Ventura De MoraisUniversidade Federal de Pernambuco, Brazil
Email: [email protected]© 2011, Jorge Ventura De Morais
ReferencesBellos, Alex. Futebol: the Brazilian Way of Life. London: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2002.DaMatta, Roberto, ed. Universo do Futebol (Universe of Football). São Paulo: Pinakotheke,
1982.Filho, Mario. O Negro no Futebol Brasileiro. Rio de Janeiro: Maud, 2003.Freyre, Gilberto. ‘Foot-ball Mulato’. Diário de Pernambuco, June, 17, 1938.Freyre, Gilberto. Sobrados e Mucambos. São Paulo: Global Editora, 2006.Hamilton, Aidan. An Entirely Different Game: British Influence on Brazilian Football.
London: Mainstream Publishing, 1998.Mason, Tony. Passion of the People? Football in South America. London: Verso, 1994.
Temples of the earthbound gods: stadiums in the cultural landscapes of Rio deJaneiro and Buenos Aires, by Christopher Thomas Gaffney, Austin, University ofTexas Press, 2008, 285 pp., 53 photographs, 7 figures, 15 maps, 2 tables, $25.00(paper), ISBN 978-0-292-72165-4.
Temples of the Earthbound Gods: Stadiums in the Cultural Landscapes of Rio deJaneiro and Buenos Aires deals with a relatively untouched theme: sports (mainlysoccer) stadiums in Latin America. The author has focused his research on two cities:Rio de Janeiro and Buenos Aires.
Gaffney begins by noting at least two ways in which ‘distancing’ took place in hiswork. The first is related to his North American origin and a field of study far removedfrom his origins and experiences. The second is an epistemological distancing, whichis a necessity in any work of academic research. Despite the fact that the first of thesemay have originated out of curiosity for something different, this motivation should,in the best of cases, be relegated to a minor role in the text. The author does not,however, achieve this objective. Thus, the final product seems to be directed at foreignprofessors and students; that is to say, the work becomes an excellent guide for thosethat intend to visit these cities with their respective links to soccer. Nevertheless, dueto his inability to shed an attraction towards the exotic, Gaffney fails to create an orig-inal work for those of us that have studied these phenomena for some time and live inthese remote lands.
The phenomena studied are described in their past and present with a certain atten-tion to detail, although the constant shifting from theme to theme diminishes the depthof the analysis. Other scholars have made valuable contributions regarding stadiumsand Gaffney does not take these into account (for example, the work of ChristianBromberger in the European context). In this sense, one realizes that in order to study
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