Shattered Glass, Switched Vote: More Turbulence for Brazil’s Soccer Federation

• By Tariq Panja, www.nytimes.com
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• MOSCOW — It is fair to say Colonel Antonio Nunes, the president of Brazil’s soccer federation, has endured a tough start to the World Cup.

  Hounded by the news media and criticized by fellow South American soccer leaders after backtracking on a collective pact to vote for the North American bid to stage the 2026 World Cup, Nunes, 80, has been in a type of self-imposed exile in Moscow. He has been staying away from official functions, beyond his national team’s games, and generally keeping a low profile.

  But any hopes he had of avoiding attention outside the Russian capital quickly evaporated within hours of his arrival in St. Petersburg on Thursday, a day before Brazil’s national team squared off against Costa Rica in its second game.

  What was supposed to be a low-key dinner with other federation officials at the Stroganoff Steak House in Russia’s second city descended into yet more controversy — and the type of negative headlines that have stubbornly clung to the scandal-plagued Brazilian federation ever since all three of Nunes’s predecessors were named in a sprawling soccer corruption indictment by the United States Department of Justice in 2015.
  While the group was eating on Thursday, a Brazilian fan spotted Nunes, exchanged insults with the administrator and shoved him. That prompted Gilberto Barbosa, a sort of aide-de-camp to Nunes, to respond by smashing a drinking glass over the fan’s head. The incident forced the restaurant to close earlier than planned, a short time before a photo of the supporter’s head swathed in a large white bandage quickly appeared online.

  To be sure, the chaos in the restaurant was an extreme example of a federation making unwelcome news. And Brazil’s soccer body is not the only one engulfed in institutional crisis: Neighboring Argentina was until recently put under special measures by FIFA, and earlier this month Ghana’s federation faced dissolution amid yet more corruption allegations.
  Still, Brazil’s status as a record five-time World Cup champion gives its leaders a special place in soccer’s firmament, whether its officials live up to that role or not.

  Barbosa, known as Giba, a looming presence alongside Nunes wherever he traveled in Russia, was quickly sent home to Brazil after the restaurant incident. Approached for comment, Nunes waggled his finger, declining to speak about the matter. Rogerio Caboclo, who has been elected to replace Nunes when his term ends next year, was wary about commenting on the situation.
  “We would love to have control over everything, but in the end things like this happen,” Caboclo told The New York Times.

  That episode, and incidents like the federation’s loud complaints about refereeing decisions and the World Cup’s new video assistant referee system, contrast with the relative tranquillity of the Brazilian soccer team under its coach, Tite. The team appears to have recovered sufficiently from its humiliating 7-1 semifinal defeat to Germany at the 2014 World Cup and is now regarded among the favorites to win the title in Russia.

  Off the field, though, things are clearly taking longer to heal.

  Nunes’s presidency was born out of crisis. Little known before his unlikely ascent, the former military policeman first took charge as a stand-in while Marco Polo del Nero — wanted in the United States on the corruption charges — took a four-month leave of absence. Nunes assumed the role permanently after Del Nero was first suspended and then banned for life by world soccer’s governing body, FIFA, following its own corruption investigation. Del Nero had carried on running the federation, known by its acronym the C.B.F., for almost two years while facing the charges, but had steadfastly refused to leave Brazil for fear of arrest.

  Nunes ascended to the top spot in Brazilian soccer almost accidentally, and by virtue of his advanced age. He was first elected into the role of a vice president, and weeks later assumed the temporary presidency when Del Nero stepped down under rules that confer seniority onto the oldest among the vice presidents.

  Though he’s nominally in charge, Nunes, universally referred to as the Colonel, appears to have little day-to-day control over operations; that is left to a group that includes to federation’s secretary general, Walter Feldman; Coboclo; and — according to the Brazilian news media — Del Nero.

  “In the background, C.B.F now has three presidents,” said Jamil Chade, the author of “Politics, Bribery and Football,” a Portuguese-language book on how soccer is run in Brazil, South America’s biggest nation. “The president-in-command does not command and is only there to avoid a vacuum of power. There is an elected president who will only assume power in 2019, and finally there is the president, who actually commands but in fact is banned from football.”

  

  Still, Nunes had enough power to have control over Brazil’s vote when more than 200 national associations voted June 13 to choose the host for the 2026 World Cup. Nunes was present and signed an accord months earlier with 10 other South American leaders to pick a combined North American bid, and he was even reminded of it by colleagues minutes before it was time to push the button.
  Seemingly oblivious to the fact that FIFA had agreed to make public the details of the vote, Nunes instead opted to vote for Morocco, the North Americans’ only rival. Initially, when he was asked by reporters why he had picked Morocco in violation of a public declaration to support its rival, Nunes said he couldn’t comment because the vote was secret. Then, confronted with proof, he first said it was another delegate who had voted before eventually admitting he had picked Morocco because it hadn’t hosted the World Cup before.

  Days later, after Nunes failed to show up at the inauguration of a World Cup facility created in Moscow by Conmebol, the South American regional body, Argentina’s soccer president described his actions as “treacherous” and Conmebol president Alejandro Dominguez said they had damaged the image of the regional organization. On Saturday, Nunes missed another major Conmebol event; Caboclo said Nunes’s decision to stay away was a “personal decision.”

  In his absence, it’s been left to Caboclo and Fernando Sarney, Brazil’s representative on FIFA’s governing council, to mend relations with other South American nations.

  For Brazilians, the apparent institutional chaos at the C.B.F. reflects wider problems in Brazil, which is in the grip of a yearslong corruption investigation that has brought down some of the country’s most well-known business leaders and a handful of politicians, including the former president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva.

  Yet soccer’s popularity in Brazil, especially when the national team plays well, as it did in qualifying and in its win on Friday, sometimes shields the federation from even worse criticism.

  “Without doubt when things are going well we have much more tranquillity and calmness to work,” said Caboclo, though he acknowledged that the cash-rich, scandal-plagued C.B.F. still had much work to do to regain public trust.

  “What exists here is a question of public opinion that in time will be back on track,” he said.

  
  
  © 2018 The New York Times Company.