Football is deeply ingrained in the culture and national psyche of Brazil, and therefore it may be difficult to believe that there was a time that the game was only played by the small elite. When the wealthy English came to Brazil at the the turn of the 20th century, around the time of the Rubber Boom, and intermingled with Rio and Sao Paulo high society, they taught the game’s basics to the richest, most aristocratic Brazilians. Football subsequently took it’s place as a large part of aristocratic life, not least because the equipment required to play, namely boots and balls, were all imported and therefore exorbitantly expensive for the average Brazilian. Unfortunately, this issue excluded all but the country’s wealthiest people from the sport. The home of Brazilian football at the time were the exclusive private sports clubs in which membership was based on one’s socio-economic situation being of a high enough standard. As a result, an undeliberate but nevertheless very real racial segregation was in effect, as much of Brazil’s poorer population were black or mulatto - it’s prudent to remember that slavery was only made illegal in Brazil in 1888 so former slaves and their immediate descendants had basically no access to the game. It was not unheard of for a person of mixed-race to be accepted into a club if they were talented enough and from a prominent family – Arthur Friedenreich is a good example – but most clubs were comprised of wealthy white people.

 

 In 1904, Bangu Athletic Club were the first to accept black players, mostly because they were a working-class factory team, and this fact attracted many other black players to the club. As more teams slowly started to follow the Bangu model, many other working class and poor Brazilians took up the game, which the wealthy elite clubs saw as a threat. They had a hatred of seeing blacks on the few football fields that were around at the time, and all of the most prominent clubs including Fluminense, Flamingo and Botafogo refused to take on players who were black. In Sao Paulo, Palmeiras preferred the option of shutting down their entire football department to accepting black players. The sole exception was Vasco da Gama – the first major club to accept players of any race including blacks, and the first to win a championship with them. There was only one rule for joining Vasco da Gama: you had to know how to play football. The inclusion of strong, talented black players made Vasco a force to be reckoned with, and the elite clubs tried everything to shut them down or stop them from playing in the Campionato de Carioca. They argued that Vasco didn’t have it’s own home ground and that many of it’s players had dubious professions such as thieves, murderers or drug dealers. Vasco responded to this by crowd funding their first stadium, opening the Sao Januario Stadium in 1927.

 

With a team comprising, blacks, mullattos, Portuguese and poor or working class whites, Vasco dominated the first division of the Metropolitan League which qualified them for the 1923 Campeonato Carioca, the first time a “non-elite” club from the city’s outskirts had entered the competition. Members of this championship winning side included a taxi driver, a wall painter, a house servant, a truck driver and four illiterate white players. Vasco swept aside the likes of America and Fluminense to win the championship in their debut season, leaving Flamengo biting their dust in second place. This lead to the other clubs complaining that by fielding black players, Vasco had an unfair advantage, and there was an outcry for all blue collar workers (aka black players) to be banned from the league.  Vasco were a revolutionary club that played a major role in the dissolving of social barriers that ruled football in the country at the time. The elitist teams didn’t like that one bit. They were so incensed by Vasco’s success, that they walked out on the league and formed one of their own. Vasco were invited to play in the new league, but only if they dismissed all their black and mulatto players.

 

Faced with this situation, the president of Vasco da Gama, Jose Augusto Prestes, wrote a letter to the league refusing to submit to the condition and officially giving up their membership of the competition. This letter became known as the “Historical Response” and was a major milestone in the fight against racism in Brazilian football. As a result of all this, two championships were held in parallel in the 1924 season, with Vasco winning theirs. Eventually, the club was allowed to join the new league without having to give up their black and mullatto players, and this is when they built their stadium, which until the construction of the Centennial Stadium in Montevideo for the 1930 World Cup, was the largest stadium in the Americas. Two years after it’s construction, floodlights were added, making it the only stadium on the continent and one of they only stadiums in the world, capable of hosting night games. By the time professionalism came to Brazil around the 1930’s, basically every team had black players in them.

​

Acheivements:  Campeopnato Carioca – Champions x 3
Toreno Inicio – Winners x 2
Campionato Carioca B – Champions x 1

Star player: Paschoal, dob 24 May 1900, pob Rio de Janeiro, Brazil nickname: The Luxury Train

​

The quick-footed Paschoal is considered a symbol of Vasco da Gama football club, having spent ten years with the team, a member of the side that ended the domination enjoyed by Brazil’s clubs when he helped Vasco to championships in 1922, 1923 and 1924 and player of the year twice. A true one club man, he spent his whole career with Vasco and stayed there after retiring as a player, continuing to work for the club until the day he died in 1987.