The ‘invention’ of FIFA history: João Havelange’s election to FIFA presidency as a historic event

ABSTRACT

In 1974, the Brazilian sports official João Havelange was elected FIFA’s president in a two-round election, defeating the incumbent Stanley Rous. The upset, often attributed to a successful alliance with Asia, the Middle East and Africa, what at the time was referred to as the Third World – surprised observers everywhere. Here, the election can be analysed as a historically relevant event of social significance. It can be thought of as a political window by means of which the international dynamic of a specific moment in the Cold War can be perceived, especially the limitations and potentialities of the agency available to periphery countries at that time.  In this article, I intend to discuss the narratives that forged the history of FIFA, which take this political ‘event’ as a key in the institution’s own historical transformation. The sources analysed will be mainly FIFA official histories, such as the FIFA News, FIFA historical books and movies about the history of FIFA.

Acknowledgments

The article presented here is a modified version of the first chapter of my dissertation: A dança das cadeiras: a eleição de João Havelange à presidência da FIFA, forthcoming. [Musical Chairs: João Havelange election to FIFA presidency]. I would like to thank both Dominik Petermann (FIFA Archives) and Michael Schmalholz (FIFA Museum Library) for providing me access to a series of documents at Zurich. I also would like to thank FAPESP scholarship and Havelange Scholarship (granted by CIES – Football Observatory), for supporting this research.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

1. Duby, O domingo de Bouvines, 195.

2. Interview with Elias Zaccour. Rio de Janeiro: 2004. Ernesto Rodrigues Personal Archive.

3. Havelange himself told the same story as it follows. ‘FIFA today is wealthy. If one day … In May, I’ll be in Zurich. If you could go there, I would enjoy it. When I got there, I did … FIFA headquarters was in an old building, and the general-secretary lived with his wife, two children, two dogs and a cat, and under his apartment was FIFA headquarters where they held the meeting. So the most you could muster were six people. I arrived, he opened the door and everything, I saw that and said, “In a few months, you’re going to leave here because I’m going to buy a house and you go.” And he told me: “FIFA has no money.” I went and told him, “It’s not your problem.” I’ll tell you one thing: have you ever imagined – he lived like this – that I live in Comet (bus company that Havelange used to work for), in a garage, with my wife and daughter? It’s the same thing. He stayed there, but eight months later he had the house. (…) And I had terrible years with this general secretary, who was a Swiss-German. He had been there for some years, and Stanley Rous did nothing against him. What he came to hate me was tremendous.’ Interview with João Havelange by Bernardo Borges Buarque de Hollanda, Carlos Eduardo Sarmento and Daniela Alfonsi. Rio de Janeiro: 2012. This interview is available for consultation at São Paulo, Football, Museum/Getúlio Vargas Foundation (CPDOC – Archives).

4. Ibid.

5. Geertz, A interpretação das culturas.

6. Tomlison, ‘FIFA and the Men who Made it’.

7. Kfouri, Futebol, ouro e lama, 183.

8. Jennings, Jogo sujo, 145.

9. Letter from Stanley Rous to Harry Banks (Technical Director of IOC), July 16, 1974. IOC Archives.

10. Peter Laslett, El mundo que hemos perdido, explorado de Nuevo.

11. Goldblatt, The Ball is Round, 517.

12. Stanley Rous, ‘The International Committee, The International Federations and the National Olympic Committees’, IOC Archives.

13. Rous, Football Worlds.

14. ‘Stanley Rous ‘Obituary’, FIFA News, June 6, 1986.

15. FIFA Magazine, December 1983.

16. Bloch. Apologia da história.

17. Sahlins, Islands of History, 12.

18. Duby, O domingo de Bouvines, 195.

19. Ibid., 10–11.

20. João Havelange: determinação e coragem.

21. João Havelange, o dirigente esportivo do século XX, 2012.

22. Havelange wrote the foreword for Tessema, and also for Syzpesi, FIFA: die stor. Both were members of the FIFA Executive Committee. Havelange wrote also the back cover of Tomlison and Sugden, FIFA and the contest for World Football in 1984.

23. ‘Framing memory’ (in Portuguese O enquadramento da memória) is an expression used by historian Michael Pollack in his article ‘Memória, esquecimento e silêncio’.

24. The Home of FIFA.

25. Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda remembered that journalists like Vargas Netto were at the same time ‘journalists and officials’. Cartola. This was the case of Vargas Netto, who was sports directors for the CBD and a journalist. He presided over nearly a decade of the Metropolitan Football Federation (FMF), as well as being a member of the National Sports Council (CND) and vice president of the Brazilian Olympic Committee (COB) for a decade. In 1970, he called Havelange the ‘blond Pelé’. For more information about him, see Hollanda, ‘O cor-de-rosa: ascensão, hegemonia e queda do Jornal dos Sports entre 1930 e 1980ʹ, 94–95.

26. ‘Um Pelé Louro’, Boletim da CBD, ano II, v.10, agosto de 1970.

27. In 1929, Carl William Hirschmann published the book Fédération Internationale de Football Association, 1904–1929. Amsterdam: J. H. de Bussy, 1929. For the discussion about the Golden Book of FIFA, see, ‘Activity report addressed by the secretary-general to 1954 Congress’.

28. Interview with Paulo Godoy. Rio de Janeiro: 2003. Ernesto Rodrigues Personal Archive.

29. Ibid.

30. Rodrigues, Jogo Duro, 157.

31. Interview with Joseph Blatter. Zurich: 2004–2005. Ernesto Rodrigues Personal Archive.

32. Canedo, ‘Foreword to FIFA – 90 years’, 9.

33. For the American context, see Kioussis. ‘Exceptions and exceptionalism’. For the World Cup of 1994, see Nadel, ‘Cup of welcome?’.

34. FIFA – 90 years, 68–69.

35. Jovem Havelange: a FIFA no Terceiro Milênio.

36. Sarantakes, Dropping the Torch.

37. Letter from João Havelange to Juan Carlos Samaranch, February 2, 1979. IOC Archives.