May 31, 2019

The Invention of the Beautiful Game

Football and the Making of Modern Brazil

Gregg Bocketti

Hosted by Keith Rathbone

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Summary

Today we are joined by Gregg Bocketti, Professor of History at Transylvania University, and author of The Invention of the Beautiful Game: Football and the Making of Modern Brazil (University Press of Florida, 2016). In our conversation, we discussed the transplantation of European sports to Brazil, the rising success of the Brazilian national team in the 1920s and 1930s, and the development of O Jogo Bonito style of play. In The Invention of the Beautiful Game, Bocketti takes on the traditional nationalist narrative of Brazilian football, which suggests that their successful teams of the interwar and postwar era, which occurred following the shift from foot-ball to futebol in Brazil, arose from the countries specific cultural and racial heritage. Brazilian soccer’s triumphs emerged from the successes of its racial democracy. Bocketti’s unique organization illustrates the contradictions in this national myth through five thematic chapters. He analyses the grafting of European sports in Brazil, the role of elite clubs in Rio and Sao Paulo played in shaping Brazilian social classes, the internationalization of Brazilian football, the function of women and respectability in shaping the fan environment, and the rise of O Jogo Bonito (the beautiful game) style of play. He shows that the so-called beautiful game era did not inaugurate uncomplicated gender and racial relations in sports. Similarly, the elite sportsmen that founded Brazil’s most esteemed sporting clubs were neither as close-minded as previous histories assume and even as players of color made their appearance on the Brazilian National Team, white, upper class men maintained their influence throughout the Vargas era. Bocketti’s work will appeal to readers interested in Brazilian soccer but also more broadly to people in the fields of Brazilian and Latin American history and scholars of sports during the 19th and 20th centuries.

Keith Rathbone is a lecturer at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. He researches twentieth-century French social and cultural history. His manuscript, entitled A Nation in Play: Physical Culture, the State, and Society during France’s Dark Years, 1932-1948, examines physical education and sports in order to better understand civic life under the dual authoritarian systems of the German Occupation and the Vichy Regime. If you have a title to suggest for this podcast, please contact him at keith.rathbone@mq.edu.au