The history of football in Brazil began in 1895 through the English, as in most other countries. The first teams began to form during this period, but, as well as the foundation of the clubs, the practice was also restricted to the white elite. According to reports, the first football ball in the country was brought in 1894 by Charles William Miller. However, the oldest records of football in Brazil date back to 1875, in Curitiba. The aristocracy dominated the football leagues, while the sport was gaining popularity in the countryside. Blacks and the poorer sections of the population could only watch. It was only in the 1920s that blacks were accepted as the sport became more widespread, especially with professionalization in 1933.
Some clubs, mainly outside the Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo axis, still resisted modernization and remained amateur. However, as time went by, almost all of them became adapted to the new reality. Several traditional and established clubs abandoned the elite of the football, or even the sport altogether.
During the governments, especially Vargas, a great effort was made to promote football in the country. The construction of the Maracanã and the World Cup in Brazil (1950), for example, happened during the Vargas era. The victory in the 1958 World Cup, with a team led by blacks Didi and Pelé, mixed-race Vavá and Garrincha and captain Bellini, established football as the main element of national identification, gathering people of all colors, social conditions, creeds and different regions of the country.
The beginning of football Charles William Miller, the son of a railway company employee, is widely credited as the "father of Brazilian football". Miller, who was born in Brazil, went to England to study at Banister Court School. There, he became an admirer of football and in 1894, when he returned to Brazil, he brought with him two balls in his suitcase.On a cold fall afternoon in 1895, I gathered my friends and invited them to play a game of football. The name was a novelty in itself, since they had only known cricket at that time.
- What is this game like? - some ask.
- What ball are we going to play with? - others asked.
- I have the ball. What we need to do is to fill it up.
- Fill it with what - they asked.
- With air.
- Then go and get it and I'll fill it up.According to Charles Miller, in an interview given to the magazine O Cruzeiro in 1952, this is how football started in Brazil. On April 14, 1895, at Várzea do Carmo, in São Paulo, there was a match between Englishmen and Anglo-Brazilians, employees of the São Paulo Gaz Company and the São Paulo Railway Company. The friendly match, which is considered the first football game in the country, ended 4-2, with victory for the São Paulo Railway.
Other versions
However, there are records that claim that football had already been practiced in the country before. In 1874, foreign sailors played a match on the beaches of Rio de Janeiro. In 1878, crew members of the ship Criméia faced each other in an exhibition for Princess Isabel. In 1886, the Anchieta College in Nova Friburgo regularly enforced the practice of football, influenced by Jesuit priests. Miller's pioneerism is also contested by Bangu Atlético Clube, which claims that it was the Scotsman Thomas Donohoe who introduced the sport to Brazil. Thomas, who was a technician for the English firm Platt Brothers and Co. of Southampton, had been hired to help set up the textile factory in Bangu. In 1894, he would have gone to England and brought a ball from there, initiating the first Brazilian football game in May 1894, four months before Miller. For the historian Loris Baena Cunha, there would be records of a match between English employees of the Amazon Steam Navigation Company Ltd., Parah Gaz Company and Western Telegraph, in Pará, in 1890.
There are also other unverified cases. It is said that, in 1882, a man named Mr. Hugh would have introduced football among his employees in Jundiaí. It is also said that, between 1875 and 1876, employees of two companies would have played a match in the field of Paissandu Atlético Clube, in the city of Rio de Janeiro. However, the hypothesis based on Charles Miller is the most accepted and widespread in the country.
Soon after its introduction, the sport began to spread to other states. In 1897, student Oscar Cox, returning from Switzerland, introduced football to Rio de Janeiro and in 1901 created the Rio Team, the first team in the state. In Rio Grande do Sul, Johannes Minerman and Richard Woelckers founded the Sport Club Rio Grande in 1900. In Bahia, the person responsible for the introduction of the sport was José Ferreira Filho, also known as Zuza Ferreira, who had returned from England after five years of studies, on October 28, 1901. In 1903, Guilherme de Aquino Fonseca, after studying at the Hooton Lown School in England, returned to Pernambuco and founded the Sport Club do Recife in 1905. Vito Serpa introduced the sport to Minas Gerais in 1904 and Charles Miller Wright to Paraná in 1908.
First championships and clubs
The São Paulo Athletic Club was the first football team in Brazil, formed in 1894 by Charles Miller, and the Associação Atlética Mackenzie College, from 1898, was the first team dedicated to Brazilians. The first club destined only for football was the São Paulo Sport Club Internacional, founded in 1899 and already extinct. Soon after, in the same year, the Sport Club Germânia was founded by the German Hans Nobiling, today under the name Esporte Clube Pinheiros.
Due to the extinction of Germânia's football department, Sport Club Rio Grande, located in the city of Rio Grande, Rio Grande do Sul, is considered the first football club founded in Brazil that is still active. In 1976, in honor of the club, the extinct CBD (now CBF) established the date of the club's foundation - July 19 - as the Football Day. After Sport Club Rio Grande, Associação Atlética Ponte Preta (AAPP) of Campinas, São Paulo, is the oldest active club, founded on August 11, 1900.
In 1901, the first match between paulistas and cariocas was held, which would be consolidated in 1933 with the creation of the Torneio Rio–São Paulo. Enthusiastic about the squad formed by Rio Team, which would be the precursor of the Fluminense Football Club, Oscar Cox began to communicate with Renê Vanorden, from the extinct Sport Club Internacional, Charles Miller and Antonio Casemiro da Costa, who would become the founder of the Liga Paulista de Football, about the idea of a match between paulistas and cariocas. The first game took place on October 19, at the São Paulo Athletic Club field and ended in a 1-1 draw. The following day, another match took place which also ended in a 2-2 draw.
In the same year, on December 19, the Liga Paulista de Football was founded. In 1902, the Campeonato Paulista de Futebol, the first official championship in Brazil, was held, where the extinct São Paulo Athletic Club became champion. Gradually, new clubs were emerging in the state of São Paulo, such as SC Americano, AA São Bento, SC Internacional, Ypiranga and Paulistano, which presented a strong performance in the early years of the 20th century, but soon stopped practicing football in São Paulo.
In Bahia, the state's football league was founded in 1905. The Liga Bahiana de Sports Terrestres had four founding clubs: São Paulo Clube (which did not participate in the championship), Clube Internacional de Cricket, Sport Club Victoria and Sport Club Bahiano. The Clube de Natação e Regatas São Salvador joined the league shortly before the start of the first competition that would consecrate Internacional de Cricket as champion. Among these, only Victoria, now Esporte Clube Vitória, founded in 1899 as Club de Cricket Victoria, remains active today.
In Rio de Janeiro, on July 21, 1902, Fluminense, the first football club in the state that would stimulate the creation of a state league and organize the sport in the city, was founded. From 1904, new clubs emerged, including Botafogo Football Club (now Botafogo de Futebol e Regatas) and America, both from Rio de Janeiro. In 1906, the first Campeonato Carioca was held, in which Fluminense was champion. On May 30, 1909, Botafogo set the record for the biggest score in the history of Brazilian football, beating Sport Club Mangueira 24-0, in the Campeonato Carioca of that year. The top scorer was Gilbert Hime, who made nine goals, a record until 1976, when Dario scored ten in the game between Sport and Santo Amaro, in the Campeonato Pernambucano, whose final result was 14-0. Mangueira dropped out of the competition with four rounds to go.
Between 1910 and 1919, more teams and federations emerged and the sport became increasingly popular. In 1910, after a visit of Corinthian FC from London to Brazil, the current Sport Club Corinthians Paulista was founded in São Paulo. Two years later, Santos Futebol Clube was founded in Santos, São Paulo. In 1912, Clube de Regatas do Flamengo would start to practice football, as well as Club de Regatas Vasco da Gama would do in 1915; both clubs existed since the 19th century, but had begun with the practice of rowing in Rio de Janeiro.
Initially, only white-skinned people could play football in Brazil as professionals, since most of the first clubs were founded by foreigners. The mestiço Carlos Alberto, in a match against his former club, America of Rio de Janeiro, in the 1914 Campeonato Carioca, covered himself with rice powder to make him look white. However, as the match progressed, sweat washed away the rice powder make-up and the farce was undone. The America fans, who knew him, started chasing him and shouting "rice powder!", a nickname that was eventually absorbed by the Fluminense fans, who started throwing rice and talcum powder at their team's entrance to the field.
Regional championships emerged, and the public and press, increasingly interested in the sport, spread it throughout the country. Football split from tennis and cricket, the sports of the elite, to arouse the interest of the general public, especially in the 1920s, when blacks began to be accepted at other clubs. Vasco was the first of the big clubs to win titles with a team full of black and poor players.
Creation of the Brazilian national team
With the foundation of the Brazilian Sports Federation (FBS) in 1914, the Brazilian national team has its debut in a game considered unofficial by FIFA against the British team of Exeter City. Held at Fluminense Football Club's Laranjeiras Stadium in Rio de Janeiro, the hosts ran out 2-0 winners. The country's first title came two months later, when Brazil beat the Argentine team at the Club de Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata field in Buenos Aires 1-0 and took the Roca Cup home.
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