CSOnline (Jun 2020)
Black Atlantic Footballer
Abstract
"A team without a Brazilian is not a team. But a team with 3 or 4 Brazilian players, well, it depends on the profile but it may not be a great team". The notorious coach José Mourinho synthesized an opinion expressed by many voices throughout my research: a mix of admiration for talent and concern about rebelliousness. This paper explores the dual image of Brazilian players, addressing how, in different historical spaces and by different agents, racial and ethnic categories of national and regional identity have been negotiated in the world of football. In so doing, it focus on some particular representations of the population of South American footballers who travel or have travelled through Europe to work professionally for global clubs, based on ethnographic research conducted with Brazilian footballers. Our findings indicate that ethnic and racial stereotypes persist, have economic consequences when they involve commercial transactions and more seriously, perpetuate racist images that refer to the time of slavery.
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