The World Cup is upon us, and Brazil has rolled out its base camp. You have seen the coverage: immaculate pitches, state-of-the-art PlayStations, and cups of protein ice cream. This is not a five-star hotel. This is a football team. And I find it deeply telling.
We hear constantly about the hyper-professionalisation of the sport. Every detail is curated. Nutritionists design the ice cream. Psychologists approve the gaming consoles. The training pitches are rolled to perfection. It is a corporate retreat, not a training camp. And it leaves a sour taste.
Consider the glory decades. Garrincha would turn up with a cigarette in his mouth. Pelé had a physio who doubled as a masseur from the local club. They trained on dirt pitches. They ate steak and potatoes. And they won three World Cups. I am not saying we should go back to smoking on the pitch. But I detect a correlation between the rise of these pampered, hyper-controlled environments and a decline in the creative, joyous football that Brazil gave to the world.
We romanticise, of course. The past was not always golden. But the present is becoming sterile. The base camp is a symptom, not a cause. It symbolises the managerialisation of football. The game is run by men in suits who believe that winning is a matter of spreadsheets, protein macronutrients, and focus groups. They have forgotten that football is essentially a chaotic, street-level art form.
Look at the Brazil team of 2022. It has Neymar, a player of sublime individual talent. But has Neymar’s upbringing been in any way like Ronaldo’s or Romário’s? He was polished from a young age, hermetically sealed in academies, his every dietary intake measured. It has given us a dazzling but brittle star. There is no grit. There is no sense that he fought his way up from a favela, using a rolled-up sock as a ball. He emerged from a laboratory.
And so the base camp is a symbol of this new age. It is comfortable. It is scientifically optimal. And it is devoid of soul. I look at the latest reports from the camp and see not a football team but a tech startup. The players glow on screens. The environment is curated. The protein ice cream is consumed with the seriousness of a military ration.
History does not repeat, but it rhymes. The Roman Empire in its later stages replaced its citizen soldiers with paid mercenaries who had all the latest equipment. They were professionally trained. They had logistics experts. And they were easily defeated by tribes who had nothing but courage and a sense of national destiny. Brazil is becoming the late Roman Empire of football.
The truth is that a bit of discomfort, a bit of chaos, forces players to be creative. It forces them to rely on that ineffable thing called footballing intelligence, honed on uneven surfaces and against dangerous opponents. You do not get that from a PlayStation.
Critics will say I am a reactionary. They will point out that better conditions lead to better performance. That is true on paper. But football is not played on paper. It is played on grass. And the soul of the game was forged in the dirt.
So enjoy the base camp. Enjoy the protein ice cream. But do not be surprised if, when the game gets tough, if the pitch turns a little wet, if the opponent is physical, Brazil looks a little lost. They are trying to win a World Cup with a spreadsheet. I hope I am wrong. But I suspect I am not.
