Black coaches rare in Brazilian football

SAO PAULO: Pele, Ronaldo, Ronaldinho, Neymar: Brazil has a long list of legendary black and mixed-race football stars. But the coach’s bench remains a largely white domain.

More than six decades ater Pele led the Selecao to the first of their five World Cup titles, in 1958, prejudice and discrimination still divide Brazilian football, a reflection of structural racism in the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, experts say.

Of the 20 teams in Brazil’s top-flight league, just one, Goias, currently has a black coach: Jair Ventura, son of 1970 World Cup-winning talisman Jairzinho. Most seasons, there are none.

“The most striking thing about that isn’t that there are no black coaches... it’s that the debate doesn’t even exist in Brazilian football,” says Marcelo Carvalho, executive director of the Observatory on Racial Discrimination in Football.

In the US and Europe, the lack of black coaches in professional sports has long drawn criticism.

In Brazil, the issue has barely registered, Carvalho told AFP.

“It’s seen as normal in Brazilian society not to have black people in these spaces. Why? Because in Brazil it’s not common to have black people in any positions of power. Football just reflects... our racist society,” he says.

Black and mixed-race Brazilians make up 55.8 percent of the country’s 213 million people. But they occupy just 24.4 percent of seats in Congress, and 29.9 percent of management positions, according to the national statistics institute, IBGE.

From the Selecao to the domestic league, Brazil’s beloved football teams typically reflect the country’s racial diversity.

But coaching jobs are another mater. Just a handful of black men have coached in the first division in recent years: Andrade, Cristovao Borges, Marcaoandrogermachado,inadditiontoventura.