We don’t support you or your “slave-like” training methods, Vasco da Gama

Posted by Eric Beard

Billions of dollars surround the beautiful game and, like in any business, clubs strive to gain an advantage over their competitors. Some gain advantages through hard work and creativity. Others do so through unethical and even inhumane practices. Vasco da Gama sadly does not appear to be a club well-versed in ethics. The Rio de Janeiro-based club have been ordered by a judge in Brazil to suspend its activities at all youth facilities due to an investigation that found young footballers were living in “slave-like” conditions. SLAVE-LIKE CONDITIONS. FOR TEENAGERS.

To put it bluntly, Vasco da Gama have been trying to hide this camp for “enslaved” teenage footballers since one of their youth players, Wendel Venancio da Silva, died last year at the age of 14.

According to the AP:

Prosecutors found the boys were lodged in deplorable conditions and not fed enough as they were pushed through a grueling routine that left them with little time for school, said main prosecutor Clisanger Ferreira Goncalves in a statement.

In addition to denouncing the teenagers’ poor housing and nutrition and their strenuous schedule, prosecutors also charged the club with transporting the teenagers in an unsafe vehicle, failing to provide them with medical care, and exposing them to unsanitary facilities.

“The decision was made to safeguard the most fundamental rights of dozens of the teenagers, aged 13 through 17, who are being violently disrespected by the club,” the judge said. “The conditions these children are exposed to are slave-like.”

Since the court hearing, the club’s fallout has been immense. Shame is rampant. Academic and (former) Vasco fan Christopher Gaffney wrote a very poignant piece entitled “Tchau Vasco” (Goodbye Vasco) on his blog.

Gaffney states, “When Vasco won the second division in 1922, the big four of the time decided that they wouldn’t play against the blacks, mulattos, Portuguese and poor whites from São Cristóvão, forming a separate league that lasted for TEN YEARS. This apartheid system was only resolved with full professionalization in 1933, six years after Vasco had built a monument to its project of social inclusion, the São Januário. Vasco’s role in opening football to all social classes, the beauty and symbolic power of the stadium and a wealth of other non-rational reasons made me Vasco. That’s over.”

He continues, “Vasco has turned away from everything that it stood for while at the same time using the words “inclusion” and “democracy” to promote their brand on a uniform. In short, Vasco is selling its history as a hollow commodity while at the same time exploiting the very people this history pretends to connect with. I repeat: Vasco was trying to hide their “slave-like” training camp for more than a year after one of their youth players died from the conditions at a different site. The board of directors smiles and struts around repeating the old mantras while marching to the drum of maximum exploitation.”

Perhaps the scariest part of this all is that the club, nicknamed Gigante da Colina (Giant of the Hill), may not be alone. In Rio de Janeiro, these practices may be widespread and many of the same prosecutors are investigating the likes of Botafogo, Fluminense, and Flamengo. As Gaffney told the AP, “The economy of football depends on unpaid adolescent labor. This is a global phenomenon that the Brazilian clubs exploit to their advantage.’’

When dreams are so big in these little children, it’s sickening to think how their potential to be stars is systematically taken advantaged of and commodified. The exploitation must be stopped. Surely, this is not the Brazilian way.