This year's Brazilian championship has a new record crowd. In the final game of the 26th round on Thursday night, a grand total of 67,011 paying customers turned out to cheer on Flamengo of Rio in their match against Coritiba. This, surely, is something to be celebrated?
Well, yes and no.
On the plus side, it is further evidence of rising attendances in Brazil's first division. The current edition is coming up to the two-thirds mark, with average crowds holding over 20,000 -- the highest figure for years. This is all the more striking in the light of the country's current economic woes.
The trend was timidly apparent towards the tail end of last year. It now seems clear that, amid all the errors and the excesses of the 2014 World Cup planning, there was some legacy for Brazilian football. Some feared a collapse in interest after the disastrous performance of the national team, losing 7-1 to Germany in the semifinals. It turns out, the reverse has happened. Despite criticism over high ticket prices, some people have been lured back. The World Cup, it seems, served as an advertisement for the stadium experience.
But the stadium experience enjoyed by all those people on Thursday night was not in Rio, Flamengo's home. It was over 700 miles away in Brasilia, the nation's purpose built capital -- in a stadium last month described as "an excess" by Walter Feldman, a director of the CBF, Brazil's soccer association. The Mane Garrincha stadium, with a capacity of 70,000, was the most expensive of the 2014 World Cup venues at a cost of $900 million. In a city where the local teams have yet to establish much of a following, there was always a doubt about how it would be put to use after the FIFA circus had left town. Currently, 400 civil servants use the stadium offices and the parking lot serves as a bus depot between matches involving local semipro sides.
There are two problems with Flamengo, or any out-of-towners, staging occasional games there. The first is that it infringes on the ethics of a league campaign, where all the teams meet each other home and away. Coritiba, for example, had to travel the extra distance from their home city in the south -- something their rivals, who met Flamengo in Rio, did not have to do.
When Flamengo play at the Mane Garrincha, the stadium is not neutral. Brasilia took over the status of capital city from Rio de Janeiro in 1960, and many civil servants were transferred there. Some of these and their descendants have yet to break the umbilical cord linking them to clubs from the old city. So Flamengo, a truly national institution, are always able to draw a crowd in Brasilia. But when some other teams, taking advantage of financial benefits, transfer their matches to Brasilia they are negotiating away their home advantage -- the kind of deal that has no place in a league system. The second, and bigger, problem is linked to this continuing Brasilia bond to clubs from Rio or Sao Paulo.
In the long run, there is only one way that the Mane Garrincha stadium can achieve a footballing viability: The local clubs must build a support base big enough to use the venue on a regular basis. Either the ground is used to develop the sport in the local area, or it is a complete waste of money. And it is clearly harder for the local clubs to attract attention if they are being forced to compete with the occasional visit from the glamour boys of Rio.
The Mane Garrincha was not even made available to Brasilia FC last month when they played the biggest match in their history, a Copa Sudamericana tie against Goias. They got through that round, and now face Atletico Paranaense -- like Goias, a first division team. Brasilia have currently fallen outside the four national divisions. Their progress this year is remarkable, and is surely worthy of attracting a sizeable crowd. Hopefully they can use the Mane Garrincha in the next round.
The gods of football, meanwhile, seemed displeased that Flamengo had chosen to switch their match on Thursday night from Rio's Maracana to Brasilia's Mane Garrincha. The team had put together an impressive run of victories, and were hot favourites to beat relegation-threatened Coritiba. But Flamengo fell to a tame 2-0 defeat, leaving thousands of disappointed fans streaming away early.
Maybe next time they can come back as fans of Brasilia FC.
