Why I'm not rooting for the national team

image: Serkan Göktay
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By VINÍCIO CARRILHO MARTINEZ*

A national team must represent the broader set of society

During the World Cup, why don't I support the (lowercase) team? For numerous and very rational reasons, I will even list a few:

I do not align myself with the football market: in fact, I defend the thesis that we should immediately end all professional sports. I understand that our resources, energies, capabilities, abilities should be directed towards amateur sports. May amateur sport be a constituent part of the curriculum and pedagogical efforts – from public schools to universities. To meet this idea, we would have to modify CF88, removing some of the items from article 217 and adding others in the form of a PEC.

In that sense, I can't root for mercenaries. Specific type of athletes who are selected players. On the other hand, 95% of players from clubs or minor leagues in Brazil do not even receive a minimum wage – in addition to all other sports that “win in race”, without incentives. The gap of social inequality and income concentration is absurd in football, acting as a mirror and reflection of national ills and miseries.

I will never wear the yellow shirt with the CBF shield. This Confederation, like many others, brings me bad (im)moral, illegal, illegitimate memories. When we “managed” FIFA it was no different – ​​just recall your memory or “google it”. Furthermore, as much as national symbols were captured by despot fascism (2016-2022), this yellow shirt is associated with the worst forms of sociability since the end of the XNUMXth century. Our pride is and has always been fascist.

No one will ever see me on the fascist flag, agenda, agenda, motivations and actions. This article is also a Letter to Fascism, in which I repudiate, in complete indignation and within the scope of possible political action, any fascist capture of national identity. In this Letter to Fascism, a sacrament that they will never see me alongside an individual who promised to adorn the former president (defeated) with a CBF branded T-shirt – if they win the championship.

If it wasn't just for that, I still say that I'm not rooting because my selection image – representative of the Brazilian people – is that of Sócrates (even though I'm not Corinthians), because it represents the fans, the “Corinthian Democracy” movement. The name, a reference to the Greek philosopher, was not for nothing, it was not in vain! My memory still rescues the selection, for technical reasons, of Telê Santana (1986).

Finally, I'm not rooting for this team – or rather, I'm rooting for it to be defeated – because I've always learned at home that football and politics don't mix. Or did not mix, until fascism gained power. My father always taught us, as children, that the 1970 national team (initially commanded by a card-carrying communist: coach João Saldanha was a member of the PCB) won the third championship in the ball, in the mastery of geniuses that the galaxy rarely gathers for the feast from the fans: another unforgettable moment, smaller of course, could be seen with Lionel Messi's Barcelona. On the other hand, politics, the banquet of the gods, was prohibited by the leaden years of the 1964 dictatorship. But the 1970 Cup was not presented to the torturers, corrupt, murderers of that time. It was elevated to the symbology of greatness of the Brazilian people. Pelé, Garrincha, Tostão, Gérson, Rivelino and others were people, exactly the opposite of the fascist-mercenaries of 2022.

The last one: I don't root because that would make my dad roll over in his grave.

If you are rooting for that reason, calling it the “national team”, I invite you to rethink, because, as the expression says, a national team must represent the nation, the people, the broader set of society. And what we see in that handful of players could be anything but social, national representation. They are millionaires, mercenaries, for the most part they represent their own pockets, when they don't nestle in fascism, with imbecile dances. Here it is still worth remembering that the little dance is a payment installment for non-condemnation of tax fraud and other affronts to the treasury and public power. In short, the mercenary, even in very serious situations, is fascist to defend his own interests.

Would you like to know that your gaming audience helped fuel this mercenary, fascist machine? I, if I did that, would never again have peace in life. My conscience would be the worst torment of the soul and body: there is no way to forgive (forget) the misogyny, the abuses, the corruption, the genocide practiced in the pandemic, the deliberate disregard for public policies and the simplest acts of administrative routine ( "misrule"). You can't forgive, forget, soften in the face of what we still live.

I can't and I won't. To all those involved, I wish the maximum rigor of the law, regardless of color, age, gender, level of education, physical, emotional, social or economic conditions. I wish, for some (some), a prolonged summer in the federal prisons of Porto Velho and Mossoró: they are the best for the type of people who stole national symbols, the national team, which destroyed civility, which fed on vaccine denial against COVID-19, for strict fascist fun. This diversionism, this football alienation, needs to end and quickly.

You can't cheer for a group like that, especially remembering that 30 million people starve, die of hunger, forgotten, excluded, banned, screwed by political power - even more so, colonized by fascism.

I do hope for the restoration of non-fascist times, I hope for the success of the constant struggle in defense of human dignity, for health and public education. I support the Constitution, democracy, the rule of law; I hope that social intelligence will once again be our guide: even with all the missteps, mistakes and misdeeds practiced before 2016, nothing compares to the current mercenary fascism – except Nazism.

*Vinicio Carrilho Martinez He is a professor at the Department of Education at UFSCar.

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