Soccer in South America

Podcast Transcript

Ranking the “greatest soccer players of all time” often leads to a top three dominated by South Americans: Lionel Messi, Pelé, and Diego Maradona.

While soccer originated in Europe, its arrival in the Americas was a turning point for the sport.

How did a game with such a late start in the Western Hemisphere evolve into a cultural sensation, and how did these nations become an engine for the world’s most brilliant talent?

Learn more about the history and rapid ascendancy of soccer across South America on this episode of Everything Everywhere Daily.

If you go back to my episodes on the origins of soccer, football, and rugby, you may recall that there were many ball-based games dating back to antiquity. These games were often violent and featured widely varying rules that changed from game to game.

The game of soccer, or football, as we know it, began to develop in the 19th century.

The first soccer associations in Europe were created in England in the 1860s, a development which was crucial to the sport’s growth.

Soccer associations organized league play and hosted tournaments, but perhaps their greatest contribution to the sport was establishing a developmental ladder from youth leagues to senior-level leagues.

European soccer experienced a surge in popularity after the establishment of these associations.

By the turn of the 20th century, the traditional European soccer powers, Germany, Italy, France, and the Netherlands, developed their own associations.

Association football arrived in the Iberian Peninsula, with Portugal and Spain adopting their club programs by the dawn of World War I.

It is clear that Europeans had an early start in developing soccer and the organizations that promote it. This foundation became important as the sport crossed the Atlantic to the Americas.

There were also contributions to the sport that went the other direction across the Atlantic.

In ancient Mesoamerica, the Maya played a ball game with some soccer-like qualities, but it was more of a hip-focused game than a kicking game. The game had ritual significance, with the losing team often chosen for human sacrifice.

When Europeans first observed this ball game, they likely noted similarities to their own ball games.

But the biggest difference was the ball. European games of the period used a leather ball, often oddly shaped and stuffed with feathers or cloth, that didn’t bounce. The conquistadors were amazed when they saw these balls, known as ulama pelotas, bounce as rubber was a New World crop and was unavailable in Europe.

In fact, they were so amazed that the Conquistador Hernan Cortés brought a contingent of Aztec players to the Spanish Court of Charles V in 1528. While the players impressed Charles V with their hip skills, the bouncing ball was the star of the show.

Rubberized balls began appearing in Europe during the early Industrial Revolution, paving the way for association football.

As association football was taking root in Europe, the continent was also undergoing massive economic and political changes.

In Italy, wars of independence and the political challenges of national unification created economic unrest throughout the country. As economic depression worsened in Italy, it led to a massive exodus of Italians in search of economic opportunities.

The Italian diaspora led to the mass migration of more than 30 million Italians between 1880 and the end of World War I. Millions of these Italians emigrated to Argentina, Uruguay, and Brazil.

The economic situation in Argentina differed radically from that in Italy in that it had a growing, flourishing economy.

The Argentine export-driven economy lacked enough workers to meet demand. This growth created new jobs, and Italians responded in incredible numbers. Nearly 3 million Italians migrated to Argentina and Brazil.

As was common throughout history, these migrants established ethnic enclaves where people from a particular region lived together.

These communities spoke their native language, ate their customary foods, and continued traditions that foster familiarity. Immigration was so intense that some regions of Argentina had as many as 30% of the population of Italian origin.

Among the traditions brought by these Italian emigres was soccer. And to put it plainly, Argentina and Brazil were never the same.

Argentina may be the most unique case study in the rise of soccer, as it had both the Italian diaspora driving the process and a large British population that further influenced local culture and the sport’s development.

The British also deserve credit for fostering a passionate soccer base in Argentina. British clubs and leagues began to appear in the railway towns of Argentina in the early 20th century.

Ethnic enclaves didn’t just foster community and familiarity for those who lived there. They also spread ideas and traditions to the host country, and soccer was arguably the 19th century’s biggest cultural import to the Americas.

Within the enclaves of Italian migrants in South America, soccer was central to life. Soccer clubs began to form in the early 20th century. The most famous was Boca Juniors, founded by Italian immigrants.

Boca is Argentina’s most well-known club. The Argentinian equivalent to Manchester United, Paris St Germain, Real Madrid, or Bayern Munich.

The clubs encouraged a progressive approach to player development, moving from youth leagues up to national teams that compete internationally.

Perhaps the greatest contribution of these clubs was the development of passionate fan bases that propelled the sport’s popularity.

The Boca Juniors website notes: What was done by Esteban Baglietto, Alfredo Scarpatti, Santiago Sana, and brothers Teodoro and Juan Antonio Farenga on 3 April 1905 was not much different from what, in those times, other groups of friends used to do in Argentina, and that was to create an irrepressible passion for football and build a team.

The Argentine soccer story is filled with extraordinary players, and it boasts arguably the two greatest in the sport’s history: Diego Maradona and Lionel Messi.

The tradition of Argentine legendary players began with players of Italian descent competing in leagues within Italian enclaves.

Luis Monti is perhaps Argentina’s first soccer hero. Monti, an Italian-Argentinian, is the only player to have played for two different countries in World Cup finals.

Monti led the 1930 Argentine national team to the World Cup finals. This was Argentina’s first appearance in a World Cup final. The match was won by the host nation, Uruguay, 4-2.

Monti reportedly received death threats during the tournament for his decision to play for Argentina from angry Italian fans. These threats had an impact, as Monti switched sides and played for Italy in the 1934 tournament who won the championship.

The expansion of soccer into the Americas also affected European teams. This became a long-term trend as it is difficult to pick up a sports page during transfer season without seeing an Argentine or Brazilian star signing a record-setting contract with one of the famed European clubs.

At the end of World War II, nationalist leader and soccer enthusiast Juan Perón sought to use soccer as an engine of national development. Peron encouraged the creation of new soccer clubs and new stadiums across Argentina. Peron saw this as a path for building national unity in Argentina.

Clubs like Boca provided a blueprint for economic and on-field success. What began in Italian ethnic enclaves and was enhanced by participation in early British leagues created a national juggernaut.

Perón wanted a modern Argentina and saw soccer as a platform for achieving this goal. He saw the development of a soccer infrastructure as a path towards the same modernization enjoyed by European nations.

A vision of soccer stadiums supporting local communities became a national goal, one that Peron supported with government loans and grants for stadium construction and the clubs that occupied them.

The strategy and style of soccer in Argentina also mirrored those of their Italian founders.

The two nations have an almost symbiotic relationship when it comes to soccer; stars from both nations often play for each other’s top teams, with the exception of the Argentine legend Lionel Messi, who, despite a well-documented Italian ancestry and dual citizenship, has never played for an Italian team.

The story of soccer’s genesis in Brazil is similar.

Driven by demand for coffee and other natural resources, Brazil was experiencing an extraordinary surge in railway construction in the early 20th century. Much of Brazil’s railway system was built by the British.

One of the railway workers who migrated to Brazil was a Scotsman named Charles Miller. Miller was the man who brought soccer to Brazil. Miller famously arrived with a copy of the English rules and a few balls in his attempt to bring the joy of soccer to Brazil.

Brazil had athletic clubs, many of them dedicated to cricket and influenced by wealthy European railway interests.

Miller founded a soccer club in Brazil’s largest city, of Sao Paolo. Originally, the sporting clubs were segregated, and Brazil’s large black population was not allowed to participate.

One of the pillars of the Brazilian soccer program’s strength has been its role in establishing leagues open to all players, black or white. This effort to promote inclusion led to the integration of clubs across Brazil.

The first large-scale inclusion efforts were undertaken by the Vasco de Gama club in the 1920s, when it fielded a team composed of both black and white players. This created some of Brazil’s greatest stars, including the legendary Pelé.

Soccer proved to be a path to social mobility in Brazil, which drove generations of talent. In a nation as urban as Brazil, with some of the world’s largest cities, soccer was a sport open to all, requiring only a ball and a little space.

Like the Argentine story, the Brazilian story is also predicated on replicating the model of European-style clubs that promoted the growth and development of the national team and created a soccer-crazed nation.

Similar to Juan Peron in Argentina, longtime Brazilian autocrat Getúlio Vargas used soccer as a springboard for modernization and national unity. Ruling Brazil for nearly two decades, Vargas used soccer to highlight the country’s progress and the establishment of professional leagues.

Vargas often used soccer as a symbol of Brazil’s modernization, its movement away from its colonial past, and a springboard to becoming a nation to be reckoned with on the world stage.

Like Argentina, the popularity of soccer was fueled by World Cup success. Led by the seventeen year old Pele’s 2 goals, Brazil came back to win 5-2 over host Sweden in the 1958 finals.

This victory convinced the nation that it could be a soccer power, a status it cemented with another title at the next World Cup in 1962. Only Italy in the 1930s would match the feat of consecutive titles.

Of the 22 FIFA World Cups that have been held. Brazil has won 5 titles, Argentina 3, and Uruguay 2. These three South American countries have accounted for 45% of all World Cup championships.

Despite its relatively late arrival, South American soccer has had a profound impact on the sport, resulting in legendary teams and some of the world’s greatest players.

The success of these South American countries is all due to European immigrants who brought the sport with them when they migrated to a new land.