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Hello, and welcome to new books and sports, a channel on the new books network. My name is Keith Rathbun and I'm coming to you from Macquarie University in sunny, sunny Sydney, Australia. And I'm speaking today with all of the ways part of me, my portrait is not so good with Louise Guillerme Berla-Maki. Am I doing that okay?
That's perfect. Okay. I'm sure that's very generous. Louise is a fantastic historian.
He has a PhD in history and he's an assistant professor in history in Brazil. And he's published a book first in Portuguese and now translated into English, The Making of a Global FIFA Cold War Politics and the Rise of Jauhavelanga and to the FIFA presidency, 1950 to 1974. Thank you so much, Louise, for joining me. You're welcome.
Thank you so much, Keith, for the invitation from the player for me to the year today. Talk about it in my book. Wow. Yeah, I'm really happy to be here today.
Thank you so much. No, no, no, I'm really... It's always a... For me, it's a blessing to get to read all the books because it's a good reason to keep up with the field.
Louise, this book was, I thought it was fantastic and I tell people that somewhat regularly. I'm like, I love your book for this reason. I love your book for that reason. But it's not often I can tell someone I loved your book because you made me totally change my mind about something I thought I knew.
And so I'm really excited to get to talk about this book. Louise, can you tell us a little bit about this project? How you developed it? What is it about?
Why is it important to you? Okay, so I'm going to start a little bit early. Back through, I don't know, 2013, 2014. It was a long time now.
So that time is for my master program. And when it started my master I was trying to figure out a project, what to do, what I really... I know from a long time that I want to research about sport and football especially in particular, but I didn't know what kind of subject. So I kind of looked into Brazilian literature about sports and football.
And there's a lot of research. When you look at Brazilian literature, there's a lot of research about fandoms, there's a lot of research about softness, sporters, players, but not so much when you talk about those who control the games, the important games we call it. They even had a specific word for that. It's called the kartolus, which means like the top hats.
The political elites, we think football. So actually I started from there in 2012 to 2013. And I did my master thesis about the football presidents in Rio de Janeiro, in two clubs from Anguen Flemines. And I interview a lot of presidents, the so-called football presidents.
And that's pretty much where I started to do research about the presidents. And one of the presidents that I interviewed, like I said, was a long time ago, told me that I should interview I have a lunch, Jean-au-Villeange, which was later the subject of my dissertation. And he told me, and at the time I was, why I'm not so interested in research about Tifa, I'm really interested in research about local politics and the connection between the presidents of Rio de Janeiro and local politics, like the 80s and the 90s. That was the topic of my master thesis.
But he assisted me like the number of other languages. And then I decided, okay, why not? And then I met with other languages, very interesting experience. The company's office, a lot of very interesting office, because I remember going there, the wall, like the wall, the walls were full of diploma, surprises, medals.
And I interviewed him and was very interesting to see how he had this very, how can I say that he had this very narrative, where he's really constantly data about himself, about his role in FIFA, about his role as a football president. So, and I realized that he was saying, what he said to me to everyone, and kind of like blew my attention, like what this person is so strong idea about himself. And maybe should go look deeper into that. And then I come with this idea to make a dissertation about him.
But I also didn't want to do like a sort of biography, because that was not what I want to do. So I decided I'm going to look into a specific moment of his life, which is this moment that he talks so much about, which is election in FIFA. And I'm going to see if the story that he claims in different places, I mean, is this for real, is this solid? So this is pretty much how I started to research about that.
At the time, remember, well, I wasn't so sure that I wanted to do a PhD in history, because I really wanted to, I mean, this was long-term ago. I wasn't so sure that I wanted to do a PhD in history, right? At the time, I want to do a PhD in anthropology. But the way things are in Brazil is really complicated too.
I mean, it's not so complicated, but it's going to be, I mean, it's complicated if you want to follow a career to do like a master in history and then a PhD in other subjects. So yeah, so I decided to do this PhD in history and research about sort of continuing what I'd done before in my master program, still like focusing on political elites, but this time in a specific situation, right? So that's how I decided that how I come up with this object. Also, there's also a little bit of context into that, because if you go back 10, 15 years, Brazil was hosting Olympic Games, Brazil was also hosting the workup.
So I was also like, there was a lot of momentum for research in sports as well. And I feel like it was a very important figure in secure Brazil to help host the Olympic Games in 2016. So it was still 12, 13, 14 years ago. It was still like a person that was important into media.
So all of this comes together and I just started doing this program. Yeah, and in some ways like an extremely ambitious project, because I think most people who know anything about FIFA, or think they know anything about FIFA know about Havalonga, because he's like the one of the principal, if not the most important figure, the second half of the 20th century in FIFA, the whole story is like that we all think we know, because Havalonga in 74 is this total earthquake moment in which FIFA goes from being traditional to being modern, it shifts from European to third world, it goes. And so in some ways, your project takes on that idea. And I want to really applaud you, Luis, too, because like you said, your work is not about, it's not a narrow biography, but also in terms of sport history, it takes on a lot of theories from outside of sport history, so globalization, theories of development, theories of even this kind of like, you know, more meta theoretical is the idea of a turning point, even the good theoretical states, you know, starting point.
Yeah, yeah. It's also a very good way to put it for me. It's not a turning point, but it's pretty much like a starting point. I will look at the election and think about what's going on with FIFA in this time, right?
So it kind of flipped the coin. How can you just, I mean, I know, and we'll talk a little bit more about the production book here in a second. So just kind of thinking at that 30,000 foot view, how does your account shift that traditional narrative? How do we all get it wrong?
How did I get it wrong? I would say to. I think, so I think, I don't want to just like I said, it was, so that's not only I, it's also very interesting because after I wrote my dissertation, actually I wrote an article in Portuguese about what is like to interview. That was a long, long time ago.
So I wrote a very short article about how he's like to interview a village and some Brazilian researchers, I'm not sure if you're familiar with them, Sancho Gigyu and Lijama Ganyanj. They also interview him and I remember everyone kind of has this feeling, I'm going to interview a village. It's so nice. It's going to be so exclusive.
And then I wrote in the specific article, he's pretty much saying the same thing to everyone. So he said, and he was giving a lot of interviews to a lot of people. And it was also very interesting because from a researcher perspective, you get access to this person who I mean superpower like a president of FIFA that you feel like so privileged to be speaking with. But actually, he was doing this with so many researchers, so many journalists, so many, he published so much about himself.
I mean, it's really incredible like how he was able to tell the story of like, the person who wants to change FIFA in the 70s and make it global, like to show different people in so different ways. And he does that, like very, I mean, that's his superpower. And he was really brilliant in a way that he presented himself as the center of his narrative. And I think that's partially true because he was certainly a very important person in FIFA, but it's also very interesting if you look with nuance how some things are completely erased.
I'm just going to give you one example. When Stanley Royce died, I'm trying to remember when, but I think it was 80s and FIFA published a bit, I know a bit to worry about him. And and Royce was one of the person who was responsible to create the FIFA development programs. They didn't mention that in his obituary.
So things are going to be like erasing, like little by little. It's very interesting to see that process. I even mentioned the beginning of my book, there was an interview that I've once gave to the Brazilian press just three or four years after taking over FIFA. So he said something that I'm not going to change much.
Things are pretty much settled. I only have to do very simple things. So he goes from this to 1994 World Cup, which is a big moment for FIFA because the first World Cup here in the United States is almost like there's also a book about this. If I'm not mistaken, it's called the 90 years of FIFA as well.
So it's also a official publication and now the legend is in the center presenting himself as a central person who changed FIFA completely. And if you look at this, that was also the moment when the first books, the first paper was academic papers about the history of FIFA also coming out as well. So they're all also part of this contest, like of this, like seeing the 1994 World Cup, which is 100% sure was another dimension compared to the World Cup before. So they're also much observed about this that they tried to look at the 1974 and say, okay, here is a moment where everything changed because they're also writing history from that present, that 1994 present as well.
But there's so much between 1974 and 1994, it's like 20 years. So they're sort of just getting influenced by this historical moment of the 90s to write about the 70s, but I think it's a very different story. Yeah. Your book does, let's jump into it in a second, but I know beforehand we just talked a little bit about the issue of the production of the book too.
So I know we want to talk about that. But yeah, your book does such a great job of showing this kind of longer history of globalization of FIFA that's not centered around how the long and really in that introductory chapter you show how the long is the arch narrator of his own story. And he's constantly kind of burnishing his own reputation and even involved. You go without without without being put into a final point on it.
It's not anti-hagea graphic, you're not tearing him down, but you are just pointing out the big outside role he plays in writing his own histories. Yeah, it's very impressive. And also Barbara Keys who wrote the foreword with my book, she told me, I'm not sure if it's on the foreword, but I'm not sure, but she told me that she's writing, I'm not sure if she's finished, I didn't have the chance to check, but last time we talked, she said she was writing biography about Kissinger and she also told me that the strongest side of Kissinger is also his ability to tell his own story as his master of diplomacy, which has a lot of parallels with Adaland as well. So I don't think this book particular about him, I feel like it's just the way, but he was very clever on this.
And he was really a master of telling his story about FIFA. This is a terrible segue, but as I mentioned, we talked earlier about the production of this book. And as you mentioned, this originally came out in Portuguese and now this is out the first time in English. And can you tell us a little bit about that process for people who are keen to know how that works?
It's also very interesting to know because I mean, just like I said, like 15 years ago, never crossed. Today I have a completely different view. I also feel like even though time hasn't passed so much, but like 15 years ago, never would pass in my mind to do like me PhD in Europe or United States. I really want to do my PhD in Brazil for a lot of reasons.
First, because I think Brazilian universities are excellent and also because I never thought of like leaving outside Brazil. So my goal was to stay there and have a family there. And so I never want to leave Brazil today. I have a different mindset, but so I wrote my PhD dissertation Portuguese, which is pretty much how we do things in Brazil even nowadays.
I think now it's just changing a little bit. So if you want to write in English, you can. I'm not sure if all universities accept English, each of these different stations. I think the university did accept that.
But for me, it was very hard because I finished my PhD dissertation. I want to publish in English because the jury recommend me to publish in English and Portuguese as a book. So I really want to try to do that, but it's also very complicated. Some press here in the US, they request that the books never been published before.
They put none other language. They want to have like the first hand publication. So for me, it was a little bit hard trying to find like the first six months. I didn't know what to do so much, but then eventually Philip got in contact with me.
He knew that I had this dissertation because we have some friends in common. Now we're also friends, but before that we didn't have any contact and he invited me to publish the book in his collection. So it made a lot of use because with this, I was able to secure funding to publish, to translate, to pay somebody to translate the book to English. So that was also very good.
And that was make like they helped me a lot in this process of like translating some adjustments for an English version as well. My book in Portuguese is a little bit bigger than in English. It has one first part about FIFA as a political entity that doesn't appear in the English version. So it's a whole first chapter that I had in Portuguese that I don't have in English.
I'm thinking of publish this as an article now, but thanks. It was very good that Philip and at the time was when I got in contact with him, Philip and I'm on the Schumann as well. They were like editors of this collection. They gave me a lot of support to do this.
There's also a lot of bureaucracy because when you have like the funding, it's also very tricky. I want to comment on this because from the Brazilian perspective, if I want to publish the book in English, I need to have it imported this. So for the Brazilian to secure the funding. And for the European and United States presses, they want a lot of them.
They want the original one. I was good. It's very tricky like those like academic, you know, it's very complicated because they're like one hand, they're putting in the first one due to publish in English. They sometimes even give you fun for them, which was my case.
But the rules are completely different from the rules from Europe and the United States. So, but thanks, like thanks to Philip and Armando and to the greater, I was able to have just much more smooth. Yeah. Yeah.
In some ways, I think the English version of my book is much more condensed than Portuguese version because I think it was the English version. You show you, but I don't think anybody's going to see that. It's probably the only people that see it. Yeah.
It's like, you know, it's big. Across Canada in Evolveau. Destination Vancouver. Turn left to leave.
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Well, one, the translation is fantastic and I wouldn't say it's not short to me, but it's perfect length for your argument that fits nicely. For people who don't know, Luis is talking about Philippe Monard and Amanda Schumann, who are affiliated with the rarest, I call it the reso de chud de redes, intel en téon en sous nous entifs. It's a European organization that really in the past decade that they've been meeting has connected scholars from around the world. And Philippe and Amanda and everyone over there at the rarest, they're fantastic.
They're still holding annual conferences as far as I can tell. So if you're a scholar of word history, they're worth looking up and getting to know because their conferences are great and they're usually in Europe, which is not a bad place to go sometimes. If you can get a little one thing. Yeah, and also they publish Haou Kumar book, which is great.
And they also publish now this book, this one I don't know, but I also feel like it's probably great, about Hungary is a superpower. So they publish Haou Kumar book about Salazar's Portugal. I know that I read this also, but it's also very interesting because this book is also published for Portuguese and now it's also in English. So the first two books were originally published in Portuguese.
And they're doing a very good job, like in this word, just collection. With books they publish. So far. And as you say, it's really hard to find American presses that will publish a book in translation that is already been published somewhere else.
And that's really a shame because there's a lot of great work that comes out overseas. That's just not accessible. Even to people who are pretty, I'm pretty good at languages or French and German. There's a huge number of researchers like yourself who rise in Portuguese and it's not era Spanish or Chinese.
We don't have enough institutions that bring this together. Yeah. And just like I said, it was also very funny because when I was looking for funding in Brazil, they're like the same breeders. They need the book in Portuguese so they can give them the money.
So it's also very interesting. Like either sides are not communicating so well. But thankfully I was able to do that and to publish this in English. And I'm really happy.
Up this is not easy. I would say most of the books in the dissertation that are published in Portuguese, they're probably going to stay local. And I was able to do that to publish in English with a lot of people reading the book. I got a lot of reviews.
So yeah, I'm actually really happy with this. Let's talk more about your book than Louise. For people who haven't read it yet, then as I say, I encourage people to go out and pick up a copy. They're five chapters and they kind of walk chronologically through the Babylon as rise until 1974.
So you're not detailing his career, which I think a lot of the books, because he's had such an important role in the legacy. A lot of books focus on that half. Once he's in charge and your work is actually kind of showing how he gets to that point. And you take on that.
This was a beautiful metaphor in the book, this kind of assumption that people had in the 60s that there was in 70s that there was a battle between English stiffness and Brazilian fluidity. It was like this contrast. And so your first chapter deals a lot more actually with a person you've already mentioned Stanley Ruse. So I'm wondering if you can tell us a little bit about Pifa in the 60s and Stanley Ruse.
What's going on in that moment and the before have a longer? Yeah, it's also very... So I wrote my book before Alan Thomas, the biographer from Stanley Ruse, I think could publish almost like, I think he published one or two years later than I. Of course, English versions later, but I wasn't able to change much.
So that one of the reasons that I don't quote this biographer, because when I wrote that before it's dead, I didn't mix. A lot of people like say, why don't you quote this? They only look to the publication date of the book in English, but it's important for people to know that because I published first in Portuguese. But the traditional deals of Stanley Ruse as the streamer is this idea that he was almost like a conservative that doesn't want to change anything in FIFA.
But when you look at the documents and the sources, what do you see about him? Even, I mean, he was a conservative in some ways, but he wants to change a lot in terms of the book. When you look at this figure, even in the 1920s, 1930s, in the football association, he was much more a connector with FIFA and with the football association and international football than a lot of his peers. So he has this idea that football was a very important way of keeping England as a leader international after World War II.
So he was pretty much responsible of doing the whole connection with the English and the former colonies. And he was a very important and permanent person after World War II in football association. So the question for me was also very interesting because when the football association decides to return to FIFA after World War II, I never understood really well why he wasn't appointed immediately to become FIFA president. So there's this almost this gap where Arthur Dury was present for I think five years, and he was only appointed after.
So I think Arthur Dury was appointed in, I'm just going to check the dates because I wrote this book, it doesn't sound like that, but I wrote it a long time ago, so I'm just going to double check the dates. So he was appointed to FIFA 1955, right? Yeah, so 1955. And then, yeah, so he was appointed to FIFA 1955 and he become for like six years ahead of FIFA.
So I never understood why this person who wasn't exactly as important internationally as it was, because Stanley Rose was very big after World War II. He had a lot of connections, a lot of connections like in Southeast Asia. He had a lot of connections in Africa as well. He had a lot of connections in Australia, United States.
And why did he pay this person, Dury? And not him. And I understood a little bit later because one of the reasons was, I think I wrote about this, is because he was a person, Stanley Ross. He was some sort of employee of the football association.
He was the secretary of the football association. He was making money as an administrator, right? And Dury was much more like a figure, like a noble figure that wasn't making money, it was dedicating himself to the football association. So he was a chairman of the football association then.
He wasn't making money. He was doing this because he was always like volunteer to work for the football association. There's also very interesting to see that big until the sixes. There was this clause in the institutes of FIFA that if you want to apply to become president of FIFA, you are not allowed to work for national federation.
So Stanley Ross was not able to, so he was not a first choice, even though he was the man that had all the connections. He was not the first immediately pick in 1955. So it took him six years, almost like a shadow of this person, Vuri, to become FIFA president 1961. And at this time it was also very interesting to see.
A lot of forces that you can also see in 1974 as well, they are already there. So I'm trying to remember as well, but he runs this election event against Andrei Avic. And what is the name of the other person? 63.
I think he says. Tom and? Tom and maybe? So it's also very clear that Andrei Avic has all, not all of them, but a lot of the new countries that are new members of FIFA after the World War II.
Because he was also member of the medical committee, was also member of the technical committee, and he was from Yugoslavia. And he was pretty much doing this role of trying to unify the Eastern, African countries and some of the Asian countries. And you had on the other side, you had Tom and with a Swiss man, what's trying to unify more of central Europe and some of the countries in more traditional countries in Germany and a lot of countries in central Europe. But you have Ross, who is pretty much now the Secretary of the Football Association.
He has all the football association of the elites. So he has Scotland, England, North Ireland, Ireland, all of them are with him and a lot of the new countries, especially in Southeast Asia. So he also goes to look at the colonization maps. It happens first in Asia and then in Africa.
So in 1961, we didn't have a lot of African countries that were members of FIFA. Most of the affiliations happened in 1964. But even though Ross has a lot of dialogues, has a lot of connections with those countries in Africa as well. So he was like the perfect man, I would say, to do almost like a facilitator between this new country that are going to be members of FIFA and more traditional ones, they are still European.
And he's going to be like this figure who's going to try to control that process and to change some things in FIFA. So he was almost elected as this figure that want to change something, but want to control the process. I would put those words. So he was not like the conservative that doesn't want to change anything.
That's pretty much Tom and I would say very much the traditional perspective. They want to keep the powers in the end of the Europeans. So he had this figure which Tom and not Ross. And we have the Andre Yevic, which is I would say much more radical, but much more pro-change in the way also see face structure.
But Ross, not a conservative person who wants to keep the start of school as it is. The chapter did a really good job of showing that. And you mentioned earlier of course that Ross was involved in the organization of the technical development committees, which as we all know is a means for moving money from FIFA down to countries that are or to use the terms of the time developing and needed additional financial support to kind of set up soccer football in those countries. And I would point out too that for listeners, another thing that this chapter does really well is it also addresses some of the challenges that were coming from outside of FIFA from the Dandong movement, the organization of the Genefo, this is an alternative game.
So FIFA and the ISC were facing challenges from other organizations. I don't want to go into that too much. We won't get to talk about any of the rest of the book because it's a really rich account. But this is kind of the moment in which it takes on, so you're very much taking on the idea of like this stage, 60s or nothing is happening.
You're going actually a lot is happening. And it's this moment that we see like at the moment, we see how the longer kind of coming in and meeting that moment. And so in some ways, your second chapter, it does the, for me, it was a nice little parallel because your second chapter shows in fact that far from being like a revolutionary from the very moment, actually how long is also in some ways very conservative. Yeah.
That was awesome. Yeah. I just want to mention one thing also because one tricky thing of dealing with sports history, and I think of being like a story in general, you don't worst with the archives that you work with the source that you've had available, right? And then you had to be really good in terms of like reading the ones, like using sources as much as you can, you know.
So for example, for me, free for providers are very good, but it's also very hard to find a lot of meaningful documents. You have to be weak because it's pretty much like a official communication, right? You don't see them like a lot of times you don't see a very, you know, explicit narrative. So we have to be working really well with the ones with the food notes, everything that you can find, but you can add to your comment, to your narrative, you have to use it.
So that's also why I use a lot of sources that I find in the IOC because even though it's a different organization, I feel like it was the same story, cool moment that people is also going through and the sources in the IOC didn't much more clear about this, right? So that's one of the reasons that I also use a lot of IOC sources in that chapter as well. But I've learned, yeah, so it's also very interesting because I've learned it was also very conservative. There's a saying here in Latin America, I'm not sure if you heard, if there's government, I support it.
I've ever heard this. No, no, how do I say that in Portuguese? We actually don't even think Portuguese, we say in Spanish because, yeah, it's also very, I don't know why even Portuguese we say in Spanish. So I go be here, no?
See, so you have a word. Something like that. If there's a government, any favor. So that's pretty much the position that he always had in his life, right?
So he always wanted to be in the side of the Swinning. So there's this political position in Latin America, it's very traditional in Latin American, but I think you can see this across the word, which is something that we call like the center, but it's not like ideological center, like moderation, it's pretty much like the center that goes on the side of whoever is Swinning. So if the right is Swinning, there are more right links. If the left is Swinning, so there are a little bit more left links.
So that's pretty much his position, right? So he was, there's government, I'm pro-ed. And he was always like on the side of the people who were in the government, which is also very interesting to see because this political tradition in Brazil and Latin America in general, all of which was very useful for him, but in the time that he was present, because every time he was in the side of the people who were in power. And if they're in the power, I don't care.
I don't care that he usually say something, I don't care if they are, I'm quoting, I don't care if they are left, yellow, back, white, they are the presence, I'm going to respect them, I'm going to be, and I'm going to work for him, which is pretty much the political discourse of this group that has an influence role in Brazil for, I would say, less 200 years, but certainly in the past 50 years, which we call, important is we call Centrón, which means like the big center. They're, they're, they're, in the side of the people who are in power. And he's sort of this part of this group. But if you're going to look in dip and you're going to try to understand this political group, you're going to see their right wingers, right?
They're pretty much right wingers. The way to think about politics, the way to think about government, they're pretty much a conservative, traditional work that doesn't want to change. And don't pretty much don't criticize anything. So he was able to go to the Nazi Olympics in 1936 and say a lot of good things about, it's very good organization, I went to Opyr, I went to, you know, talk good things about this and also good things about the 1980 Olympics in Moscow.
So it's this kind of political view that you don't pretty much, you don't criticize anything, you just are there. A safer Ontario means more police and prosecutors making sure my car doesn't get stolen. It means building new jails to keep criminals behind bars. And it means there's no need to worry when I play at the park.
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One thing you can see across his career is that actually he did you in some ways closely the idea that sports and politics are at least not natural bedfellows. Yeah, a lot of times. It's also very interesting to see because I would say that his dream was to become like the head of the IOC. I think he manifests that in a couple of present-day reviews in the sixth list and the fifth list.
I think he ultimately political goal was to become head of the IOC. But I also feel like he realized that in the IOC you never had a chance because there was pretty much more European dominant institution than FIFA. So it was in a moment and also hard to see when exactly that happened. I think it was probably 1966.
He has this click and decided to go present his name to become FIFA present. I would almost certainly say that happened between 1966 and 1968. The moment when he had this click that he wants to become FIFA, not he wants to, but he can. He could become FIFA present if he can't fame for that.
That probably happened somewhere between 1966 and 1968. From me, 1966, forget 1974, 1966 was the year because in chapter three I think you bring this out really well. So what happens by now, middle of the 1960s, had along already working in Brazilian football, he's come up through Flumionsa and now he's a mocker, a muckety-marker that used to Portuguese to earlier. He's an important figure within Brazilian football.
Then something happens in 1966 that creates a lot of criticism for him. He has to make a really big gamble. So what's going on between 1966 and 1970 that really sets the stage for him to use Brazil as a launching pad to get to FIFA? It's also very interesting to see because until recently I hope this has changed.
I don't think so, but hopefully it has. In Brazil we had this idea that we never lose the workout. Sometimes we won't win it. Sometimes we don't win it.
Maybe that changed after 2014, I don't know, but that was pretty much the discourse into 2014 that Brazil, the World Cup, the World Cup, belongs to Brazil. Sometimes we're just not able to win it. Then we have to find an explanation. You must find a villain, I would say, in a reason.
Why we have the World, the World Cup? So Brazil won the work of 1958, 1962, but didn't win, 1966. So who is the villain? Since we have the best players, that's the narrative in the press, we have to find a villain.
So the press was divided between two villains. One of them was the administration of Brazilian Football Association. The other one were the referees that did a very poor job in the World Cup. So I would like to mention the center of this debate.
And again, actually I would say that he lost this one inside Brazil because he was pretty much the center, like the face of the defeat in 1960, 60 feet. But he was trying in Brazil to push to sort of, no, I wasn't the main responsible for this defeat. The main responsible of this defeat was the bad referee from FIFA, and he was trying to push this. It's also very interesting because even if you look at Brazilian games, there is one specific game, Brazilian Portugal, that some players deserve to be sent off.
Especially if it looks with the eyes from today, right? If you look at the highlights of this game, it's a very violent game. But I'm not so sure about how is this, just a regular game in the 60s. It was probably more violent.
It was different. If you look at the eyes of today, it's a very violent game. A lot of folks like Helland is a game. So it was Chase in the field.
But nothing happens in the Brazilian game, but a lot of things happens in the Hawaiian games and also in their routine game as well. So he was trying to create this narrative that not only Brazil was robbed, but pretty much South America was robbed in 66 World Cup in no way that he was not perceived to the Brazilian past as the villain of the defeat of Brazil in 66. But he wasn't so successful in terms of like, inter-interminerative, but I think it was a very starting point for him to be able to be unified and to establish political ties with the other local federations, with the South American federations. Because if you look at the history of the South American football, as a lot of drivers between Brazil or the Y Argentina, a lot of disputes, Argentina didn't play the 1950s workup because they did have relationship with the Brazilian federal association.
So if you look at the story of the Brazilian and Argentina football association, there's a lot of moments there were never allies. Most of the times they were not friendlies. It's also the Brazilian relationship with the rise of South America has also been really complicated because there's a very big country, there's only a country that speaks Portuguese, there's a lot of, I would say, I'm trying to find a good word, but there's a lot of suspiciousness in either side, either from Brazil's perspective, but also on the Spanish country's perspective. So the relationship was never good.
So that, this defeat, in 1966, was also key moment in terms of where they start to perceive that they have some share interest. And after this, they start to get much more political united than before. So, and there's a lot of documents that shows that, either on the press, also diplomatic documents as well, that show that every 1966, they start to get more together in terms of presenting a political project to FIFA. It's also very interesting to see because a lot of us, I'm saying sports historians, we don't think that what happens in the field has an impact into political terms, but this is a very good example on how sometimes it has.
It was pretty much the fact that all these South American clubs lost, that food starts to create the sense of solidarity after the defeat, after 1966, the defeat. And that was the moment when they start to work for his candidacy. You needed support domestically as well. In this chapter for me, one of the things that does really well is show how tenuous that was at first.
He reaches out to business leaders, is the government going to support him? And it wasn't always so clear. People are like, well, yeah, we can support you maybe. We can be on your side maybe, but you blew it.
You blew it in 1966. So, he was in my mind in reading this and I'm going, this is a really big wager that he's going to, he puts the other thing that you called in, they called the Mexico plan, and it's like, if Brazil does not win the World Cup in Mexico, he's sunk. There's no way. He's going to see wedding everything on Brazil being able to win the World Cup, which to me is the biggest bet.
He's like, no, because I mean, you know, for me, I'm like, no one deserves doing the World Cup. You just kind of do. Because it's so un-sick. Exactly, of course.
But at this time, he was also very, so he was trying everything to win the World Cup again. And as you probably know, it's going to be the third time that Brazil is going to win the World Cup, which has a huge impact because the first country to win the World Cup three times was able to take the Juli Jimé trophy to home, right? After that, he changed the trophy. So that was a big thing back then.
And that's why I'm not going to say that. I'm going to say this just because I feel like this is more like a fan than a story. I feel like the 967s, World Cup is probably the biggest World Cup because we have the Brazil, Italy, Germany, they're all fighting for the chance to win the trophy. That's why also why it was so big.
And the first time the World Cup was showing televisions in callers for most of the place that also has to wear the myth, not the myth, but the fact that the fact that the fact that the fact that it was so big, because it was the first time, I wouldn't say the word, but a lot of, almost the entire world is seeing the World Cup live and the fact that it was doing those incredible things that you can see in video, right? The very big moment also because of that. So he was also again, he was betting a lot on this and he was, I mean for him, was a very strong back because he pretty much had no option. Otherwise he got to probably be sacked from his football association position.
He's going to be replaced if he doesn't win. And he's also one thing that doesn't appear in his narrative because when you tell the narrative from the present, right? It's just always like I was destined to be greatness. I was destined to be for president.
But when you look from the things that happen, like you know football has a lot of, you know, a lot of things that happen in football field. You don't know what's going to win. You don't know what's going to lose. But then he has his speech.
I was destined to become fifth president and to create this FIFA that I created. But there was a lot of things that could have been done wrong. And that's also one of the things that I tried to do in my book, to show that, like history, in the process, not history from the president, but how this happens, like, because when you have the results, like 1994, I mean the World Cup is in the US. He won.
But what about 1968? Because it was like a mass. We had a military government. It pretty much isn't even if you were like a supporter of the regime.
When you have like the dictatorship, you're never safe. You're never 100% safe. Even if you have like friends, even if you have like connections, you're never safe. I mean, I don't think people realize that.
And he, even though I just said that he was, there's a government, I mean favor, but he was also a figure that was pretty much identified with some of the political opposition of the regime, because it was friends of a lot of people from the previous government as well. So the military government never thrust 100% into his political figure. So, yeah. What was the real occasion?
Thank you. As you show in chapter four, he was maybe, you know, among the most predominant figures for making a case for Brazil as a model of development independent or different from other models. And this is the other thing that I really loved and talked about, that kind of contraliological history was that you not only tell the story about what's going on in Brazil, you tell the story about what's going on in FIFA, but you also tell the story about what's going on globally. And like the political crisis of FIFA, the decolonization, the Cold War, all kind of intersect with his rise at a very particular moment.
And if it had been a couple years later or a couple years earlier, it wouldn't have been possible, but because it happens, like, right at this kind of very particular moment, he is able to take advantage. And so I wonder if you could talk a little bit about, is this chapter four for me was one of the coolest, because it kind of deals with the intricacies of FIFA agencies and agents and their fighting against agents, but also, you know, of what corruption might mean. And then at the same time, like, they're bringing everyone, everyone possible to Brazil, you know? Personally, from the like, the capture, like I prefer, in my opinion, the captures that I like, the chapters that I like the most is chapter one.
And this one, yeah, I feel like the still, the whole argument of the book is always in one chapter. Yeah, I agree with you. So, yeah, it's also very interesting to see that. When I think about contralogical, teleological narratives, it's also, we know what happened to China, we know what happened to Brazil.
We know who is a superpower now, we know that China is a superpower, but we didn't know, we didn't have this idea in 1973, right? We didn't know how, because there's a lot of speculation that Brazil keeps growing from 10% a year that was growing the 70s. Brazil might be like the next Japan, next China, wherever. So there's a lot of optimism, there's a lot of expectations, there's a lot of desire, political desire as well.
Brazil become a bigger and bigger party in the Cold War. That never happened, but again, 972, 973, people didn't know that's never going to happen. Now we know, never happened. It's also very interesting because there's also another moment where everyone feels like Brazil was going to be able to become a central player in the global stage, which is the moment that I started doing my research, and also didn't happen as people expected.
Even though it was a very different circle moment, but there's a lot of comparisons. We were hosting the workup, we're hosting the Olympics, we expect Brazil to boom. What happened, we had the biggest economic crisis that have ever happened in Brazilian history, and now we're still dealing with that. So it's also interesting parallel, all the moments I was writing the book, and what was happened in 1972, 973.
So the goal of the lunge was pretty much to try to present Brazil as this new model of society, like very open, democratic, even though it was a dictatorship. The democratic in a way that was very much open to everyone. And it's also funny because I still feel there's a lot of people outside of Brazil that still has this image that Brazil is a very democratic. When I'm saying the democratic I'm not talking about politics, I'm pretty much talking about the idea that everyone is welcome to Brazil.
Let's do it in civic society and racial democracy. The idea of racial democracy, I didn't want to use this. I mean, the myth of racial democracy, everyone is going to Brazil, going to be accepted, you're going to be welcome, you're going to be, it's a very strong picture that people internationally have about Brazil. I have some friends here in the US, they're always saying, no Brazil is a Greek card, they have no switch from races or all of this, but we do actually have.
But also if you look into the perspective of the scientists, again, you have the Brazilian national team, they have a lot of white players, they have a lot of black players, they have a lot of different kinds of players playing together, this incredible football is a great way of advertising your country, right? And to make people believe that, okay, now we have a very democratic society where everyone has a chance, no matter if you look, for example, if you look to the United States, you have the segregation laws like six years before, if you look to South Africa, at the same time you have apartheid. And Brazil has these players, all these national teams coming together, that was not happening to other national teams at this time. Maybe Peru, Uruguay, a little bit, but most of them, Brazil was pretty much a section because they have so different players, so different backgrounds.
And for other countries, it was a perfect way of advertisement, his role at the Football Association, this team, almost like saying, you know, are you guys seeing this team over there? I sort of made this. I'm not only made the team, I also made this come to Brazil, I'm going to show you, and that was pretty much what he's trying to do. So he invited a lot of delegates from FIFA, 971 to 973, to come to Brazil, to visit Brazil, even Holes, he then created this event, just called the mini World Cup.
So there was this idea of creating this, they were called the passing the pandemic to celebrate 997, 250 years of Brazil independence, was also big thing for the military government at the time. So he created this tournament where he has this idea of bringing to Brazil the best national teams all over the world, which is also fascinated, they never came, other than ever came to Europeans, they never came because they soon realized that it was a political tool for other countries. But he was able to get to get all the South American, so all the 10 countries in South American Federation, they came to Brazil, they play, was also able to come. It's also very interesting story that I feel like this is to be better taught, it's the only time as far as I know, the only time they have a national continental African team, where they get to play the best days in Africa, they made like a team, and they come to play Brazil.
I think it's the only time as far as I know, where they have this sort of team to play like an official tournament. He does the second thing with the Caribbean, Caribbean team as well, and Mexico I think also comes, Yugoslavia, Portugal, all friends, all of them come to Brazil to play this tournament. It was an opportunity for them, and to have a line, to have a line, to have a line, to show what avalanche has done in Brazil. He shows the big stadium, the big city is also very interesting, the place where he took those persons.
He always wanted to take them to Brazil, which is pretty much the symbol of modern Brazil, the very futuristic city, but he also took them to big constructions, like dams, roads. That was pretty much the symbol of developing modernization in Brazil, it's been through the past five, six years. So, for me, a fantastic chapter to showcase how he, with the support of these Brazilian businesses and the government could make a case for himself, but also Brazil as a steward for FIFA, but also as a model, a model for development that borrowed from capitalist and communist lexicons, but it wasn't one or the other, it was kind of neither nor. I would say it's pretty much a capitalist model, but we felt, so there's a lot of criticism in Brazil, the United States, especially the way they do with racial relations at that time.
So, we got the best from the West models, from the United States, without racist, I would say. So, that's the official word. I'm not saying that I'd wear this, but that's the official discourse. Like, yeah, the best from the West without the racist that we can see in the United States.
So, yeah, so that's pretty much what we're trying to say. Here's a different society for people in Africa. There are not very happy whether things are going on in the United States. You also, like, we're also showing how you can become from being a colony that's being exploited to a modern and developed country, right?
Which, I mean, if you look to the United States, you're not going to see a model for that, because it's a different story that you have in Africa. We have a much more similar story to present and to show to you and to demonstrate how we are similar to you. It's also very interesting because I would say that China pretty much occupied this place that Brazil was trying to be at, absolutely, right? It was able to, yeah, China was able to present itself as neither Soviet model or neither American model.
Both, I mean, in many of the countries of South America and China took on that voluntarily and not in some ways took on that mantle of third-worldism. You know, like, actually, you know, we can lead some of this. In the interest of time, we need to move on a little bit. There's one chapter left, which we're not going to leave that to the readers, but this is the key chapter in some ways.
It's not the crux chapter. It's not really. Here's where you just show Chapter Five, the world that we lost, FIFA Crisis in the making of a new international order. You take on a really naughty problem that people who work on IOC or FIFA deal with, which is that they vote for these leaders, and they vote for decisions, but the votes are secret.
I sort of tried to try to see whoever vote for either engine, whoever had not. I try. I mean, I don't know how much I could do that. I also feel like it's also very interesting because just like I said, I feel like the best chapter was Chapter Four.
When I got to Chapter Five, which in Portuguese is Chapter Six, I was pretty much tired and I just feel like I didn't have a lot of energy to roll this, but ultimately I feel like I did. Yeah, I tried to answer this question, move over the line, and who did it? And I was pretty convinced, and I think you also leave some measure of uncertainty for things where you weren't sure. Did Portugal vote for Abilanga or not?
You ever tried to ask? You never know. You never know. Obviously there's a conclusion.
You actually wrote questions in the conclusion like, hey, how much did Hado Longa's work set the stage for Brazilian efforts in the 2000s, but you've already talked about? He's one of the things actually. So I think maybe it's time for the question I usually ask people at the end, which is we've read this fantastic book that you wrote. Is there something we can look forward to in the future?
What are you working on now that you might want to tell people about? No, actually, it's a very good question. So I'm working, I work in this book. It's an added collection about the football presidents, which is pretty much the work that I started with, just like I said at the beginning.
So I published this special issue on soccer society, it's called the football presidents, which is, I was really happy to see like different places, different parts of the world about like how the club presidents can have like a very important position in politics in different societies. So it's coming up as a book now as this added collection of soccer society. So that's pretty much where I'm working now. I finished this.
My goal is, I told you before we started, my idea was to go to Illinois for a period, but never happened. So right now I'm not doing any archival research. I want to do, I'm probably going to do in maybe one or two years. I want to have this, I also this idea of rights like a political history of FIFA, not like not only other lunch, but the whole history of the law, like introduction.
Maybe that this is something I want to do at some point. But now I'm pretty much just taking care of like my family, like now my priorities, like my family and take care of my family. And after maybe two years, I'm probably going to go into another bigger project. That's pretty much what I'm doing now.
Thank you. I think that's a good process. We don't always have to be doing everything. Yeah, you know, I did this book.
I think it was also very interesting that the people present once. So I really recommend you for interesting, we learn about like, presidents and soccer presidents. There was a very good webinar that we hosted and there was a very good special issue about myself. I published recently an article about the first woman to be president of a group of the first woman to be present in the Brazilian clubs.
It's also going to come up in soccer society as well. And one thing that I also want to do maybe in the next two years before I started this big project is to publish in English, the part of the book that was brought to case with this discussion about why is FIFA. I never, yeah, why is FIFA, how can we framework FIFA and how can we think about FIFA as a historical and political entity? I want to see if I can publish that.
I think that's good. And that's really important work because too many histories of FIFA are kind of on, so generous, internal kind of work. FIFA has a kind of organization in real history rather than as a political history that's connected to these broader forces. That's necessary.
Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. We, the listening, we've been speaking with Luis Guillerme Berlaamaki, who is the author of Making a Global FIFA Cold War Politics and the Rise of Jauhavalanga to the FIFA presidency, 1950 to 1974. Thank you.
Thank you. Thank you so much, Luis, for joining us. You're welcome. I really appreciate it.
It was a very good conversation. There was a very good conversation. We enjoyed it. Yeah, yeah, and I thank you again for the opportunity to read the book.
This one was just absolutely fascinating and definitely worth it for listeners to go pick up a copy. All right, you all have been listening to new books in sports, a channel on the new books network that I'm Keith Rathbone coming to you from a quarry university. Thank you for listening. Thank you so much.