It's more than two years after Brazil's disastrous World Cup showing. Why are they launching an inquiry now?
"Brazilian soccer has been in chaos for the last six months, the low-point being when their Olympic team lost to Cameroon in the quarter finals. They'd been expected to win the Olympic medal for the first time ever — the only title they've never won — and instead played terribly and were eventually beaten by a nine-man Cameroon team. That really got everyone going.
"There'd been talk of an inquiry after the World Cup, particularly into the role of Nike [the sports apparel company that sponsor's the Brazilian national team]. This year's chaos created a public clamor for answers, so now we have two inquiries — one into the role of Nike, and the other into the state of Brazilian soccer in general."
Why is Nike the focus of an inquiry?
"Many Brazilians complain that Nike has too much power over the Brazilian soccer federation. In particular, there's resentment about the clauses in the sponsorship contract that require Brazil to play five friendly matches a year, in which their opponents and venues would be chosen by Nike. There have been complaints in Brazil that this is an insult to the national sovereignty, and that decisions about where and against whom the national team plays should be taken only by the Brazilian soccer federation, not by a U.S. sportswear company.
"One of the things revealed in the investigation thus far was that the contract was recently renegotiated, and that Nike takes the proceeds that come from two of those friendly matches a year. The background to these suspicions about Nike was the 1998 World Cup final against France: Ronaldo, Brazil's star forward and one of the key players sponsored by Nike, suffered a series of convulsions before the final match but was still sent onto the field, where he played terribly and looked really out of it. That led to allegations that the reason he'd been forced to play was the Nike contract, although that's never been proven."
Is there more to all of this than questions about the role of the team's sponsor?
"Yes, there are many different allegations of corrupt behavior. The parliamentary commission has the power to demand the bank and phone records of players and officials, and they've been doing that. We don't yet know all of the charges they're investigating, but a few have already come to light. In fact, one former manager who is playing a role in the soccer federation's investigation has been accused of calling substandard players into the national team in order to increase their transfer value on the European market, where having played for Brazil greatly increases a player's reputation. The allegation is that he'd been taking a percentage of the inflated transfer fees paid to Brazilian clubs as a result of his team selections. And there's also a brewing scandal about passports — passports from European Union countries have been organized for at least three Brazilian players, and possibly many more, who have been sold to European clubs, in order to get past the restrictions on the number of non-E.U. players each club can hire."
Are Brazilians confident that the investigations will help clean up the game?
"It's too early to tell. The job of the commissions is to probe these charges and lay bare the truth. Sometimes, this can lead to great changes, but at other times it feels like a great plutocracy in which nothing happens. But the investigations guarantee public attention and pressure on those in power to do something. Soccer, after all, is the national obsession here, and to merely call it a sport does no justice to its centrality in Brazil's national identity."