South American Broadcast: The Other Side Of The Coin

Regarding football, when July comes, signings are the hot subject. No wonder, it’s transfer market time in the biggest spotlight of the football world: Europe. With the market open it’s time to think of renovation or simply reinforcements for the squad. That’s when clubs go out looking for great players who don't fit their asking salary, dreams or glory ambition anymore. But they also look for hot prospects around the globe, players who grew up in ordinary clubs or those who currently belong to what would be considered big clubs in their respective leagues, but when compared to the European giants or Asian millionaires, become small.

In South America there are countries that breath football. In Brazil, it’s almost every little boy’s dream to become a football player, and for those who achieve this, winning the league or Libertadores and being part of the national team it’s the objective, it’s glory. But then that isn’t enough, the highest glory one player can dream of is to get to the big stage, to where worldwide glory and recognition rests: the European most famous leagues, specially the Spanish, Italian, English and German ones.

Playing in La Liga, Serie A, Premier League, Bundesliga and performing in the Champions League is something most kids only dream of in their video games, so if for someone so far away to achieve this wasn’t enough fuel, there’s also the economic factor. Money talks, they say. It could be mute considering the joy of joining a historic club that collects fans all around the globe and the satisfaction of being considered one of the best, but it’s not. It speaks volumes, to the point where players leave their countries to destinations with not so glorious football only because of it. But could we say “only”? The salary Asian millionaire clubs can afford to pay the players cannot compare to the ones offered by the clubs that helped to develop them. Considering that a lot of players come from families with low income, an opportunity to be economically settled for the rest of their lives cannot be discarded so easily. And not only players are tempted to a move, coaches too.

The problem for some of the South American leagues is not only the loss of great quality in the teams, but also the timing of it. The season works differently from the northern countries. It doesn’t start in August or September and end in May. In Brazil, for example, it starts in May and ends in December. Now, in July, the championship is currently heading to its 15th round, with the highest four places occupied by Grêmio, Flamengo, Vitória and Palmeiras respectively, with just four points between them and the leader having 28. It’s a very balanced championship, being hard to tell in its start which teams are gonna end the season with one of the four Libertadores spots. It depends much on their current economic situation, which can change from year to year, and on their squads, which sometimes changes from semester to semester! That’s when the European transfer market reflects on it. Suddenly South American leagues are like big shops and players, products in vitrines. Teams lose their most important players in the middle of the competitions. This year Flamengo (the best attack so far) was leading the Brasileirão until last Thursday, but their last two losses and a draw saw them lose it to Grêmio (the best defence). We can discuss if it was solely because they just lost two very important creative players, Renato Augusto to Bayer Leverkusen and Marcinho to Qatar S.C, but it is certain that this fact played a role in it. Another one that headed to Qatar is Roger, who after a good form at Grêmio, where he was on loan, left the club through the back door after the club’s president critcised how suddenly he announced his move.

Fluminense just had a month to forget with their disappointing loss in Libertadores final (in a penalty shootout) in front of more than 80,000 people in their home ground. But if that wasn’t enough, in order to prepare for their games in the continental competition, they neglected the home league having a serious of bad results, and are now fighting to leave the relegation zone, occupying the 18th place with just 13 points. They have a good squad and are perfectly capable of pulling that off, but two of their most gifted players, one in attack and other in defence, are now being linked with moves from abroad. They’re Thiago Neves and Thiago Silva. The latter is currently a target of reports coming from Italy claiming that AC Milan is interested in him and Alex Silva, a centre back from São Paulo. Silva is not the only São Paulino being linked with a move. Miranda, another centre back, and Hernanes, an attacking midfielder, are also subjects of speculation. There are few official offers but a lot of talk. It doesn’t even take a player to be sold to get in the way of a team’s performance. Some of the players that are being watched by scouts and being surrounded by agent’s talk drop their performance levels, much due to the pressure. Feeling the need to impress affects the weakest psychologically. This summer there was also Diego Cavalieri sold to Liverpool, Henrique to Barcelona and certainly there’s more to come, with Palmeiras turning down an offer of 9 million euros from Hertha Berlin for Chilean attacking midfielder Valdivia (they’re expecting a bigger one) and a deal that would see Grêmio’s Leo go to Español probably coming soon. That leaves a lot of trouble to the coaches, who have to work hard in order to recompose the missing pieces.

So what could be done in a situation like this? About the players leaving, not much. But regarding the league, it’s like that saying, if you can’t fight the enemy, join him. Adapting the football calendar to the north countries one could be a way of dealing with the issue. There’s a lot of journalists and people in Brazil that defends changes in the calendar of Brazilian football, changing not only the Brasileirão dates but also the Copa do Brasil ones, for different reasons. The Argentinian Primera División already works like this since the 80’s and has influenced the organization of others South American leagues. But it isn’t as easy as it seems. July and August is not summer time in the south, not only the football calendar is different, but also everything that surrounds people’s lives, from school to work. So leaving these two months without something that generates a lot of profit such as football is not the easy way out by any means. So as you can see, it’s an issue that still is gonna give a lot to talk about, being far from having a clear solution.