Brazil hard man
Backing for Jair Bolsonaro, the far-right presidential candidate, from current and former players is a problem for clubs who do not want to be seen to be crushing free speech
The view from Barcelona on Brazilian politician Jair Bolsonaro, the leading candidate to win his country’s presidential elections this month, was a rare case of a football club taking a principled stand in a game that often likes to pretend the old lie that sport and politics do not mix.
“Our democratic values do not coincide with what we have heard from this candidate,” said Josep Vives, the Barcelona spokesman. Take a brief canter through the misogyny, racism and homophobia of the former Brazilian army captain’s track record and it is not hard to see why that would be an easy decision for the club to make. It is difficult to know where to start with Bolsonaro, although most would pick out his 2014 response to criticism from Maria do Rosario in Brazil’s lower house of Congress for a remark of his about rape.
Enraged by the criticism, Bolsonaro said in a subsequent interview that Rosario was “not worth raping”. He has also said that he would rather any son of his would “die in an accident” than be gay. “I would be incapable of loving a homosexual son.” He said that black Brazilians who had come from communities originally settled by freed slaves “aren’t even good enough for procreating”.
Bolsonaro is nostalgic for the days of Brazil’s military dictatorship, he is pro-torture and so hard on crime and security that he sees no issue with the police carrying out extrajudicial killings. For Barcelona, the issue was that two of their most famous players from the previous decade, Ronaldinho and Rivaldo, are supporters of the far-right candidate; although when it comes to Brazilian football they are far from the only ones.
“We do respect the freedom of expression,” Barcelona said this week, “including the words of Ronaldinho.” The club said they had not yet reached a decision on whether he would be retained as a Barcelona ambassador.
Bolsonaro is polling at 58 per cent of the vote for next Sunday’s election in what has become a spectacular backlash in the country against the Workers’ Party. He has recovered from being stabbed at a rally in September and his popularity has soared again. The 63-year-old has generated momentum in a country which says it is sick of crime and corruption, his supporters wear the yellow shirts of the national team and their political gesture of choice is the pointed-finger pistol.
The Watford goalkeeper, and former Brazil international, Heurelho Gomes, has been an enthusiastic backer of Bolsonaro, posting on Instagram pictures of himself wearing a pro-Bolsonaro T-shirt. He tweeted that he had queued for two hours and 45 minutes at the Brazilian embassy in London to vote as an expatriate in the first round of the presidential elections on Oct 7.
Lucas Moura, the Tottenham Hotspur winger, has also endorsed Bolsonaro on his Twitter feed. His preoccupations are Brazil’s crime rates and corruption in Brazilian politics. Moura has made it clear that he believes Bolsonaro would be the solution. In debating with his followers Bolsonaro’s most offensive remarks, it was put to Moura by one correspondent that the candidate’s record marked him out as a racist, sexist homophobe. Moura responded that he “didn’t know where these ideas come from”. That tweet has been liked more than 9,000 times.
These are by no means the only Brazilian footballers to have backed Bolsonaro.
The former international, Felipe Melo, who played for Juventus and Inter Milan among others, was one of the first. Carlos Alberto, a five-cap Brazil international who won the 2004 Champions League with Porto, is another. The views of Moura and Gomes are unquestionably a problem for their clubs, who, nevertheless, like Barcelona, do not want to be seen to be crushing free speech.
Neither Watford nor Spurs were prepared to comment. Gomes is understood to be considering speaking publicly about his support. He is said to feel that, if elected, Bolsonaro will carry out some of the more extreme threats he has made during his candidacy. For Brazil’s footballers, in particular, it seems that the issue of security is most important, and Bolsonaro’s hardline stance against criminals appeals. His historic comments are dismissed by some of his support as views that he once had but no longer holds or, at the very least, do not need to be taken seriously.
The toxic nature of Bolsonaro’s candidacy has reached every area of Brazilian life. The choice of yellow for his supporters, and most commonly the Brazil team jersey, has had a polarising effect on those who love the country’s most famous international symbol. For many on the left, the Brazil shirt has become politicised, another weapon in the battle that is being waged against the Workers’ Party and their candidate, Fernando Haddad, who typically wear red. The ESPN Brasil reporter, Joao CasteloBranco, who is a
familiar face around the Premier League, covering the Brazilian contingent who play in England, has tweeted his opposition to Bolsonaro. CasteloBranco feels that the Brazil shirt has now become an instrument of the right. “I’d be embarrassed to wear it,” he says, “and I’d be embarrassed for those people wearing it in the street.”
There were similar reservations within Brazil about their 1970 World Cup-winning team. For the rest of the world that team, led by Pele, winning his third World Cup, are the greatest side in the history of the game. For others in Brazil, they were a tool of the military dictatorship for which Bolsonaro still holds a candle, a way of polishing Brazil’s reputation internationally while democratic rights were crushed internally.
Over the international break, Bolsonaro picked up another supporter. David Duke, the former leader of the Ku Klux Klan, who endorsed Donald Trump for United States president in 2016, said on his radio show that the Brazilian “sounded like one of us”. Bolsonaro rejected Duke’s endorsement on Twitter and instead emphasised Brazil’s racial plurality. Certainly for Bolsonaro’s other supporters, that is some company to be keeping.
Catalans have to decide whether to retain Ronaldinho as an ambassador