Coming to Brazil I thought football would be a part of everyone's national identity. Kids playing on the street, everyone wearing green and yellow and every TV tuned into a local or professional game. Researching it a bit since I've been here proves that in 1950 when Brazil hosted the World Cup it truly was a part of their national identity. But, walking around the streets of Curitiba and watching local news channels has proved a little different. There's no doubt that there is a huge hype about the upcoming World Cup, but digging a little deeper there is more then just the advertisements and excitement that we see on the surface. It seems that this sense of national pride and identity that football once brought is being overshadowed by more important issues like the billions of tax dollars that are being spent on the construction of stadiums when it's education, transportation and health care that really need the funding in the peoples eyes. I may have come to Brazil a bit naive on how important football was to some but to many I didn't even imagine how much it truly means to them and affects them.
Over the past week we've been fortunate enough to visit a local professional club, Coritiba, and listen to guest speakers from another club, Athleteco and private University POCI. Through all these experiences there was one underlying message. It was made clear that to many young kids football is not just a matter of having fun on the streets or even just a part of their identity. To some it's their whole life. Kids have a dream that football is their ticket out of poverty and into a life of riches and success. There are the stories of players like Ronaldo and Neymar who started off poor and on the streets but through football achieved great success. These are the stories that give kids in favelas and poor communities the hope of using soccer as a gateway out of their current life situation. The sad reality is that this happens to a very small percentile and in the end they are left with nothing.
The article Youth Soccer in Brazil far Different than in Yakima Valley, by Ross Courtney, describes two teenage boys that hope to follow a similar path that both Ronaldo and Pele did to find success. "In Brazil, teenage boys commonly move far away from their families to nurture their professional dreams. They train three hours a day, lift weights and bunk in dormitories." These children that leave their families and move away from their homes give up everything to get to a training facility at a professional club. Once they are there they have not only left their families behind but at the age of fourteen put their education to a halt. This can be a very dangerous decision.
"Behind the romance, Dumunt and countless other Brazilian boys are living a gritty, sacrificial side of youth soccer that American fans don't always see. Scouts for professional clubs find the best players, pluck them from those streets and train them as miniature pros." The goal of these academies is not to develop well rounded academic athletes that have a back up plan if football does not work out for them. Their goal is to develop these boys into professional footballers that can be sold to European teams to make a profit. If three years into a boys training the club loses interest in the player or sees no future for him in football he will just be released. At this time he has invested everything into his football career and often has nothing to go back to. No back up plan, and years behind in education. In regards to having a back up plan Pedro Isidore states, "I don't think about it, football is enough." Sadly there is an abundance of kids that get scouted and train at these professional academies but the reality is that less then 2% make it professional. That means for that 2% the risk of leaving behind everything was well worth it, but for the other 98% they have nothing to go back to and often go to drugs and crime.
I came with the stigma that everything right now would be related to the World Cup and how football would prove to be a part of Brazil's national identity. I didn't even consider how on a smaller nation wide scale football could have such an immense impact on teenagers lives everyday in this country.
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