The Making of a Global FIFA

In 1974, the Brazilian sports official João Havelange was elected FIFA's president in a two-round election, defeating the incumbent Stanley Rous. The story told by Havelange himself describes a private odyssey in which the protagonist crisscrosses two thirds of the world canvassing for votes and challenging the institutional status quo . For many scholars, Havelange's triumph changed FIFA's (International Federation of Football Association) identity, gradually turning it into a global and immensely wealthy institution. Conversely, the election can be analyzed as a historical event. It can be thought of as a political window by means of which the international dynamic of a specific moment in the Cold War can be perceived. In this regard, this book seeks to understand which actors were involved in the election, how the networks were shaped, and which political agents were directly engaged in the campaign.

Auteur

Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui, Federal Institute of Brasília, Brazil.

Résumé

"Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui's book sheds original light on an institution that is often analysed in the field of sports history, but whose leaders are still little known. Based on research in completely original archives (notably outside from Europe), Luiz Burlamaqui invites us to better understand the trajectory of Joao Havelange, one of the most influential sports leaders of the 20th century and surely one of the most active promoters of the commercialisation of the game. A valuable read for scholars, students in Sport history and in Business history, and also obviously for football enthusiasts." - Gregor Quin, Professor of History,University of Lausanne.

"Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui skilfully recounts not only the ambition of a man and a country but also the role played by sport in North-South relations. It allows us to better understand the complexity of the man of power that João Havelange was. A must-read book that was missing from the historiography of football and Brazil." - Paul Dietschy, Professor of Contemporary History, Université Franche-Comté, France.

"Result of a dense, original, and recognized thesis defended in Brazil, this book gains with this translated version a necessary breadth and a well-deserved international reach. The book shows the other side of Pelé, great international icon engineered by Brazilian football during the 20th century, by analyzing the meaning and role of sports leader and decade-long FIFA president, João Havelange. The contrast, so to speak, between Pelé, a Black man, and Havelange, white and blond-haired, illustrates a dear idea to the national imaginary-that of the so-called Brazilian racial democracy, which had in football one of its most powerful means of diffusion, affirmation and embodiment, especially in the decanted figure of "king" Pelé.
But by following the meanderings of a trajectory and by unveiling the intricate strategies to garner national and international power at the head of a series of sports institutions, whose apex would be the election-win of FIFA in 1974, this book examines another, much less visible and much more insidious, controversial and hidden, persona: João Havelange.
The young and talented historian Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui goes far beyond dissecting a biography or investigating an event. Based on state-of-the-art debates about the political history of International Relations during the Cold War and equipped with primary sources from archives of several countries in South America and Europe, Burlamaqui retraces the vicissitudes of a plot that allowed a former Olympian to climb successive positions within this network and reach the top of the sports power scale, enlarging this same structure since the 1970s and transforming football into a planetary phenomenon, full of contradictory senses and power struggles dear to the political economy.
As one of the most important works produced by the Brazilian Academy in football studies, its English version will undoubtedly constitute, from now on, an unavoidable international reference for researchers who want to understand, in light of the best historiography and solid social theory, the construction of football's global power and, consequently, the singularity of FIFA's institutional history during the 20th century." - Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda, Associate Professor, Getúlio Vargas Foundation (FGV-CPDOC).