CBF – Brazilian Football Confederation
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November 21st, 2009
Anyone who follows the Brazilian football team will hear often about CBF, the powerful Brazilian Football Confederation.
It is a Confederation because it is a congregation of the State Federations. In Brazil, the law determines that each State should have a Federation for each professional sport; see, for example, sites of the Football Federations of São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, the two most powerful in Brazil; see also sites of the Confederation of Volei and Confederation of Aquatic Sports.
Until 1979, all sports had, at national level, only one Confederation, called CBD – Confederação Brasileira de Desportos; until 1978, the Brazilian uniform brings the letters CBD, instead of the current CBF.
All professional football teams are affiliate to the Federation of the respective State. According to law, there are periodic elections to choose the President and Directors of the State Federations. Still according to law, the State Federations have the power to elect the President of the Confederation.
This way of managing power in football causes some problems. In a Federation, the vote of all teams have the same weight; so, in São Paulo, for example, the vote of São Paulo FC (the team with most Brazilian championships ever) has the same weight of any team in the second division of that State. Also, in the national voting, all Federations have the same weight; powerful São Paulo has the same voice as the State of Acre, where there is barely a professional championship.
So, the President of CBF is not necessarily the most popular among the teams, much less the most popular among Brazilian citizens and fans. It is possible to happen (and it has indeed happened – the current President has been in office since January of 1989) that the President of CBF is the person with great political abilities to get votes from smaller teams or weaker States, where it is easier to influence voters.
This explains, for example, why the last match of the Brazilian team in the Qualifying for 2010 World Cup happened in Campo Grande (see video), a city in the State of Mato Grosso do Sul. That State was pissed off because it was not chosen as one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup; the President of CBF brought the match to Campo Grande to try calm down the Mato Grosso do Sul Federation (and possibly gain a vote in the next elections).
Read more information about the Powers of CBF.
July 29th, 2010 at 10:22 am
[...] would become white elephants; it is well known that FIFA and CBF make decisions based largely on financial and political criteria; the twelve host cities were too many and not the best [...]