Football and politics: the World Cup of shame

The sport cannot serve as a smokescreen to conceal injustices

- BENEDITO TADEU CESAR

I'VE FOLLOWED football for almost my entire life, not only as a fan, but also as a researcher.

I'VE FOLLOWED football for almost my entire life, not only as a fan, but also as a researcher. In 1981, I defended my dissertation, “The ‘ Gavides da Fiel and the Eagle of Capitalism or The Duel? in the Postgraduate Programme in Social Anthropology at Unicamp, considered the first academic Master's thesis in Brazil about an organised fan group.

In that work, I sought to understand football as a social, cultural, and political phenomenon, far beyond the four lines of the field.

At that time, football and sport in general were not yet considered “serious” subjects by much of Brazilian academia. Many saw these manifestations as minor issues, unworthy of the attention of the social sciences.

The consolidation of the sociology and anthropology of sport in Brazil would only occur years later, thanks to the work of several researchers who demonstrated how football expresses social conflicts, collective identities, political disputes, economic interests, and worldviews. Today, this seems evident. Forty-five years ago, it was not.

Perhaps that’s why it's impossible to watch the events surrounding the 2026 World Cup without a profound sense of unease.

Over decades of studying politics and society, I've learned that football has never been isolated from power struggles. Governments, economic interests, international conflicts, and ideological projects have always found in sport a privileged space for projection and influence. What changes are the historical circumstances and the degree of visibility of these interferences?

Football, power and politics