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ISSN 2178-1494
Estudos Históricos, volume 32, número 68, set.-dez. de 2019. Rio de Janeiro: Centro de Pesquisa e 
Documentação de História Contemporânea do Brasil da Fundação Getulio Vargas, 1988 
Quadrimestral 
Resumos em português, inglês e espanhol
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ISSN: 2178-1494. 
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estudos históricos 68| Futebol, História e Política 
Rio de Janeiro, vol. 32, no 67, p. 565-830, setembro-dezembro 2019H
Sumário
FUTEBOL, HISTÓRIA E POLÍTICA 565
FOOTBALL, HISTORY AND POLITICS 
FÚTBOL, HISTORIA Y POLÍTICA 
Bernardo Borges Buarque de Hollanda, João Marcelo Ehlert Maia e Thais Continentino Blank 
ArtigoS 
TRANSLATING THE RULES OF FOOTBALL IN SOUTH AMERICA, 1863-1914
TRADUZINDO AS REGRAS DO FUTEBOL NA AMÉRICA DO SUL, 1863-1914 
TRADUCIENDO LAS REGLAS DEL FÚTBOL EN AMÉRICA DEL SUR, 1863-1914 
Matthew Brown
“OS LEÕES EM ÁFRICA”: FUTEBOL E POLÍTICA NO IMPÉRIO COLONIAL PORTUGUÊS (1954) 589
“LIONS IN AFRICA”: FOOTBALL AND POLITICS IN THE PORTUGUESE COLONIAL EMPIRE (1954) 
“LEONES EN ÁFRICA”: FÚTBOL Y POLÍTICA EN EL IMPERIO COLONIAL PORTUGUÉS (1954) 
João Manuel Casquinha Malaia Santos 
A TRANSFERÊNCIA DE JOGADORES NO SISTEMA FIFA E A MIGRAÇÃO DE BRASILEIROS PARA A EUROPA (1920-1970) 609
THE TRANSFER OF PLAYERS IN THE FIFA SYSTEM AND THE MIGRATION OF BRAZILIANS TO EUROPE (1920-1970) 
LA TRANSFERENCIA DE JUGADORES EN EL SISTEMA FIFA Y LA MIGRACIÓN DE BRASILEÑOS A EUROPA (1920-1970) 
Marcel Diego Tonini e Sérgio Settani Giglio
SOBRE ELEIÇÕES, FESTIVAIS E RESOLUÇÃO DE PROBLEMAS: FUTEBOL DE VÁRZEA E REDES POLÍTICAS LOCAIS EM 
BELO HORIZONTE (1962-1965) 633
ABOUT ELECTIONS, FESTIVALS AND RESOLUTION OF PROBLEMS: FUTEBOL DE VÁRZEA AND LOCAL POLITICAL NETWORKS IN BELO HORIZONTE (1962-1965) 
SOBRE ELECCIONES, FESTIVALES Y RESOLUCIÓN DE PROBLEMAS: FUTEBOL DE VÁRZEA Y REDES POLÍTICAS LOCALES EN BELO HORIZONTE (1962-1965) 
Raphael Rajão Ribeiro
OS EMPRESÁRIOS, A PÁTRIA E A BOLA: NACIONALISMO, ORGANIZAÇÃO EMPRESARIAL E O FINANCIAMENTO DA SELEÇÃO 
BRASILEIRA DE FUTEBOL DE 1970 655
THE ENTREPRENEURS, THE HOMELAND AND THE BALL: NATIONALISM, BUSINESS ORGANIZATION AND THE FINANCING OF THE 1970 BRAZILIAN SOCCER TEAM 
LOS EMPRESARIOS, LA PATRIA Y EL BALÓN: NACIONALISMO, ORGANIZACIÓN EMPRESARIAL Y FINANCIAMIENTO DEL EQUIPO DE FÚTBOL BRASILEÑO DE 1970 
Luiz Guilherme Burlamaqui Soares Porto Rocha
A COPA DO MUNDO DA DITADURA OU DA RESISTÊNCIA? COMEMORAÇÕES E DISPUTAS 
DE MEMÓRIAS SOBRE A ARGENTINA DE 1978 675
THE WORLD CUP OF DICTATORSHIP OR RESISTANCE? THE COMMEMORATIONS AND DISPUTES OF MEMORIES ABOUT ARGENTINA OF 1978 
¿EL MUNDIAL DE LA DICTADURA O DE LA RESISTENCIA? CELEBRACIONES Y DISPUTAS DE MEMORIAS SOBRE ARGENTINA DE 1978 
Lívia Gonçalves Magalhães
VIDA E MORTE DO MARACANÃ: A BATALHA DO ESTÁDIO EM DOIS ATOS 695
LIFE AND DEATH OF MARACANÃ: THE BATTLE OF THE STADIUM IN TWO ACTS 
VIDA Y MUERTE DEL MARACANÃ: LA BATALLA DEL ESTADIO EN DOS ACTOS 
Erick Silva Omena de Melo
Gabriel da Silva Vidal Cid
 
ColAborAção eSpeCiAl
THE NORTHEAST PLAYS FOOTBALL, TOO: WORLD CUP SOCCER AND REGIONAL IDENTITY 
IN THE BRAZILIAN NORTHEAST 720
O NORDESTE TAMBÉM JOGA FUTEBOL: A COPA DO MUNDO E A IDENTIDADE REGIONAL NO NORDESTE BRASILEIRO 
EL NORDESTE TAMBIÉN JUEGA FÚTBOL: EL MUNDIAL Y LA IDENTIDAD REGIONAL EN EL NORDESTE BRASILEÑO 
Courtney Campbell
THE HISTORY OF FOOTBALL AND LITERATURE IN BRAZIL (1908-1938) 744
A HISTÓRIA DO FUTEBOL E DA LITERATURA NO BRASIL (1908-1938) 
LA HISTORIA DEL FÚTBOL Y DE LA LITERATURA EN BRASIL (1908-1938) 
David Wood
 
entreviStA
ENTREVISTA COM MARIA LÚCIA GARCIA PALLARES-BURKE 765
INTERVIEW WITH MARIA LÚCIA GARCIA PALLARES-BURKE 
ENTREVISTA CON MARIA LÚCIA GARCIA PALLARES-BURKE 
Concedida a Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda 
 
teSeS e diSSertAçõeS
TESES E DISSERTAÇÕES DO PROGRAMA DE PÓS-GRADUAÇÃO EM HISTÓRIA, POLÍTICA E BENS CULTURAIS (PPHPBC) 
DO CPDOC/FGV DEFENDIDAS EM 2019 811
565
E d i t o r i a l
Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 565-568, setembro-dezembro 2019
Futebol, história e política
Football, history and politics
Fútbol, historia y política
Bernardo Borges Buarque de HollandaI* 
João Marcelo Ehlert MaiaI*
Thais Continentino Blank I*
Editores
Dossiês temáticos têm-se mostrado de grande importância para o desenvolvimento dos estudos sobre esportes e futebol nas Ciências Humanas e Sociais brasileiras. Desde 
pelo menos o ano de 1994, com o dossiê organizado pela Revista USP (n. 22 – Futebol), 
assistiu-se a uma série de publicações em periódicos científicos sobre esse tema no país. Com 
base em números especiais, textos e autores tornaram-se referência e fonte recorrente de 
citações. Deste modo, contribuíram para a formação de um campo de estudos e possibilitaram 
um avanço reflexivo — teórico, metodológico e empírico — em torno das práticas esportivas 
nacionais e internacionais.
 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S2178-14942019000300001
I Escola de CIências Sociais da Fundação Getulio Vargas (CPDOC/FGV), Rio de Janeiro – RJ, Brasil.
* Professores da Escola de Ciências Sociais da Fundação Getulio Vargas (CPDOC/FGV) e Editores da Revista Estudos 
Históricos (bernardo.hollanda@fgv.br; joao.maia@fgv.br; thais.blank@fgv.br)
Bernardo Borges Buarque de Hollanda, João Marcelo Ehlert Maia e Thais Continentino Blank 
566 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 566-568, setembro-dezembro 2019
A própria revista Estudos Históricos contribuiu nesse sentido em 1999, quando publicou 
o número 23 — Esporte e Lazer —, conhecido por trazer à tona debates e por ensejar polê-
micas acerca dos referenciais mais apropriados para pesquisas na área. A “década esportiva”, 
como ficou conhecido o período entre 2007 e 2016, com a realização de uma gama de me-
gaeventos esportivos no Brasil, estimulou também um conjunto significativo de dossiês dessa 
natureza, publicados em congêneres como a Horizontes Antropológicos, a Revista de História 
(USP) e os Cadernos AEL (Unicamp), entre outros periódicos científicos.
Passados os megaeventos, e multiplicadas as pesquisas sobre modalidades esportivas 
em programas de pós-graduação no país, novas gerações continuam a se debruçar sobre esse 
fenômeno típico das sociedades modernas e contemporâneas, capaz de mobilizar identidades 
coletivas, interesses midiáticos, circulações globais, fluxos financeiros e representações sociais. 
A motivação para a organização de um número específico dedicado à temática futebolística, 
cuja importância no século XX permanece atual, relaciona-se também a um cenário de desafios 
políticos que se colocam para a sociedade brasileira, na esteira das chamadas Jornadas de Ju-
nho de 2013 e no conturbado ciclo jurídico-político que se sucede ao Brasil pós-megaeventos.
O presente dossiê propõe, pois, uma articulação entre três dimensões — Futebol, História 
e Política. Estas inspiram-se, por sua vez, no trabalho desenvolvido pelo saudoso colega Carlos 
Eduardo Sarmento (2013), pioneiro no CPDOC nos estudos futebolísticos. Em sua investiga-
ção sobre a história institucional do futebol, feita com fontes primárias junto aos arquivos da 
Confederação Brasileira de Desportos (CBD), Sarmento tratou da constituição da identidade 
nacional por meio da Seleção Brasileira e propôs intersecções diacrônicas desta com entidades 
desportivas, com instituições de poder e com estruturas políticas em chave mais ampla. 
A tríadeque circunscreve o presente número permite igualmente arejar um assunto mar-
cado pelo peso ceticista das Teorias Críticas do Esporte, muito presentes nas Ciências Sociais 
europeias, norte-americanas e sul-americanas entre os anos 1960 e 1980, a exemplo dos 
escritos de Jean-Marie Bhrom (2006), Gerhard Vinnai (1973), Bero Rigauer (1981) e Juan José 
Sebreli (2005). 
Se a introdução dos estudos sobre futebol no Brasil precisou contornar tais críticas 
funcionalistas e frankfurtianas, que preconizavam sua condição seja de dominação instru-
mental seja de epifenômeno da ideologia capitalista, valeu-se para tanto das postulações da 
Antropologia Social na afirmação da relevância do objeto no decorrer dos anos 1980. Rito, 
mito e símbolo das sociedades complexas foram, então, mobilizados para observar processos 
constitutivos da identidade nacional, em particular o significado, ora metafórico ora metoními-
Futebol, história e política
567Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 567-568, setembro-dezembro 2019
co, adquirido pelo selecionado brasileiro nos eventos quadrienais das Copas do Mundo FIFA, 
com seus sentidos amplificados e conduzidos pelas narrativas da imprensa.
Assim, de tema secundário e por vezes não sério, o futebol pouco a pouco conquistou 
sua legitimidade e alcançou sua institucionalização na Academia. Nos últimos anos, obser-
va-se também uma diversificação de abordagens, com a capacidade de ir além do âmbito 
meramente identitário e culturalista. No terreno da historiografia, a história social tem-se 
apropriado da temática em períodos mais recentes, graças a trabalhos seminais como o de 
Leonardo Pereira (2001). É o caso de destacar também a história política, cuja renovação nos 
anos 1980 (Rémond, 2003), se ainda é tímida na oferta de pesquisas concretas sobre o assun-
to, pavimenta caminhos para um tratamento menos canônico nessa área. 
A proposta de renovar olhares acerca da história política do futebol é, portanto, um 
objetivo que se procurou contemplar com o presente volume. Da mesma maneira que as 
edições anteriores de Estudos Históricos, a grande demanda recebida e o elevado número de 
artigos aprovados, acima do que se poderia afinal publicar, foram uma prova do número de 
pesquisas de qualidade existentes nos dias de hoje, não só no Brasil como na comunidade 
acadêmica internacional. A difícil tarefa de selecionar ao final os textos por publicar sinaliza 
para a existência de um alargamento e uma continuidade geracional de pesquisadores que 
vêm se formando nas últimas décadas.
Sendo assim, o presente dossiê é constituído por três partes principais. A primeira con-
ta com os sete artigos selecionados após o processo de avaliação cega por pares. Trata-se 
de doutorandos e doutores, vinculados a programas de pós-graduação no Brasil, em sua 
maioria historiadores, mas também de sociólogos, urbanistas e pesquisadores da área de 
Educação Física. 
A primeira parte é composta por textos de autoria de João Malaia (Dep. História/Univer-
sidade Federal de Santa Maria); Marcel Tonini (Dr. História/Universidade de São Paulo) e Sérgio 
Giglio (Dep. Ed. Física/Universidade Estadual de Campinas); Raphael Rajão (Doutorando em 
História/FGV CPDOC); Luís Burlamaqui Rocha (Dr. em História/USP); Lívia Magalhães (Instituto 
de História/Universidade Federal Fluminense); Erick Melo (IPPUR/Universidade Federal do Rio 
de Janeiro) e Gabriel Cid (Dr. IESP/Universidade do Estado do Rio de Janeiro). 
Salienta-se, ainda na primeira parte, a colaboração de um autor de origem inglesa, Mat-
thew Brown, professor de Letras Modernas na Universidade de Bristol, no Reino Unido. Agra-
decemos, a propósito, às dezenas de pareceristas ad hoc que contribuíram voluntariamente 
com sua expertise para a composição final dessa seção.
Bernardo Borges Buarque de Hollanda, João Marcelo Ehlert Maia e Thais Continentino Blank 
568 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 568-568, setembro-dezembro 2019
A segunda parte abarca as colaborações especiais e traz os dois autores internacionais, 
convidados especialmente pela equipe editorial para publicarem no dossiê. São eles: Courtney 
Campbell, brasilianista de origem estadunidense, doutora em História pela Universidade de 
Vanderbilt (EUA) e professora da Universidade de Birmingham; e David Wood, latino-america-
nista de origem inglesa, responsável por presidir a Society for Latin American Studies (SLAS) 
no período 2017-2019, e professor da Universidade de Sheffield.
A terceira e última parte do número 68 de Estudos Históricos apresenta uma entrevista 
com Maria Lúcia Garcia Pallares-Burke, referência importante nas Ciências Históricas e So-
ciais, em particular no estudo da obra de Gilberto Freyre, destacando-se como pesquisadora 
associada há mais de vinte anos do Centro de Estudos Latino-Americanos da Universidade de 
Cambridge.
2019 foi um ano de perdas na área de estudos do futebol, com o falecimento de três pes-
quisadores referenciais: o sociólogo inglês Eric Dunning, o geógrafo Gilmar Mascarenhas e a 
antropóloga Simoni Lahud Guedes. À memória desses três estudiosos dedicamos este número.
Por fim, desejamos a todos uma boa leitura.
Referências bibliográficas
BHROM, Jean-Marie; PERELMAN, Marc. Le football, une peste emotionelle. Paris: Gallimard, 2006.
PEREIRA, Leonardo Affonso de Miranda. Footballmania: uma história social do futebol no Rio de Janeiro 
(1902-1938). Rio de Janeiro: Nova Fronteira, 2000.
RÉMOND, René. Por uma história política. Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2003.
RIGAUER, Bero. Sport and work. New York: Columbia University Press, 1981.
SARMENTO, Carlos Eduardo. A construção da nação canarinho: uma história institucional da seleção brasileira 
de futebol, 1914-1970. Rio de Janeiro: FGV Editora, 2013.
SEBRELI, Juan José. La era del fútbol. Buenos Aires: Debolsillo, 2005.
VINNAI, Gerhard. Football mania: the players and the fans – the mass psychology of football. London: Orbach 
& Chambers, 1973.
569
A r t i g o
Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 569-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
Translating the Rules of Football in 
South America, 1863-1914i
Traduzindo as Regras do Futebol na América do Sul, 1863-1914
Traduciendo las reglas del fútbol en América del Sur, 1863-1914
Matthew BrownI*
 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S2178-14942019000300002
i Acknowledgements: I am very grateful to Gloria Lanci, Bernardo Buarque de Hollanda, Martin da Cruz, Brenda Elsey and 
David Wood for their support and inspiration in researching this article.
I University of Bristol. Bristol, Reino Unido.
* Historian of Latin America. University of Bristol. (matthew.brown@bris.ac.uk) 
ORCID iD: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2025-4433
 Artigo recebido em 01 de julho de 2019 e aprovado para publicação em 28 de outubro de 2019.
Matthew Brown
570 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 570-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
Abstract
This article explores the early history of Association Football in South America through the case study of the 
first translations of the rules of the game from English into Portuguese and Spanish. It demonstrates, by means 
of a comparison of the different temporalities and contexts of these documents, the connected and transna-
tional nature of the sport. This has often been neglected in national paradigm studies of football pioneers and 
the first matches, clubs and leagues. The study of the translators suggests new avenues for the study of the 
interlinked histories of sport, politics and culture.
Keywords: Football; Translation; Sport; Violence.
Resumo
Este artigo explora o início da história da Association Football na América do Sul através do estudo de caso 
das primeiras traduções das regras do jogo do inglês para o português e o espanhol. Demonstra, por meio 
de uma comparação das diferentes temporalidades e contextos desses documentos, a natureza conectada e 
transnacional do esporte. Isso tem sido frequentementenegligenciado nos estudos nacionais de paradigmas 
de pioneiros do futebol e dos primeiros jogos, clubes e ligas. O estudo dos tradutores sugere novos caminhos 
para o estudo das histórias interligadas de esporte, política e cultura.
Palavras-chave: História; Futebol; Tradução; Esporte; Violência.
Resumen
Este artículo Este artículo explora la historia temprana de la Asociación de Fútbol en América del Sur a través 
de un estudio de caso de las primeras traducciones de las reglas del juego del inglés al portugués y español. 
Demuestra, comparando las diferentes temporalidades y contextos de estos documentos, la naturaleza conec-
tada y transnacional del deporte. Esto a menudo se ha pasado por alto en los estudios nacionales de paradig-
mas pioneros del fútbol y los primeros juegos, clubes y ligas. El estudio de los traductores sugiere nuevas vías 
para estudiar historias interconectadas de deporte, política y cultura.
Palabras clave: Historia; Fútbol; Traducción; Deporte; Violencia.
 
Translating the Rules of Football in South America, 1863-1914
571Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 571-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
Introduction
There has been a remarkable expansion of new work on the history of sport in South America in general, and association football in particular, in the last decade (Melo, 2017; 
Brown, Elsey and Wood, 2018; Brown, 2015; Alabarces, 2018). Most of it has been carried 
out by scholars working in local newspapers and, more rarely, institutional archives, conducted 
by researchers inspired by the pioneers in the field. Its primary concerns with the history of 
this or that city, club or national league have tended to mean that it exists outside the field 
of global history. This article contends that the history of sport in South America should be an 
ideal case study to test some of the founding hypotheses of the discipline of global history. 
To what extent do global connections shape local processes? What is the role of mediators 
between cultures? At what point in the late nineteenth century do key transformations occur 
that shape the development of later globalizations? And at what stages and in what spheres 
does South America escape the role of periphery, or victim, that it is usually assigned in histo-
ries of globalization? This article suggests, by means of a case study of the first translations of 
the rules of association football in South America, that hybrid, vibrant and distinctive sporting 
cultures emerged shaped by both global pioneers and by the colonial past (following the insi-
ghts of Dietschy, 2013, and Marquese and Pimenta, 2018). Translators were active mediators 
between cultures, shaping the past in ways that Anglophone historians of sport and politics 
have tended to be blind to until now (for example Bass, 2014).
Sports promoters in South America often wrestled with how to explain to the public 
exactly what it was they did, and why. When the “Football Association of Chile” (named in 
English rather than Spanish) announced in January 1898 that it would be holding its first 
Athletics “Championship Meeting” (using the English name for the event), it clarified: “el 
primer Championship Meeting, o sea, porque no tiene traducción posible en nuestro idioma, 
el torneo de diversos juegos atléticos establecidos por la asociación de football, según lo 
anunciamos hace algunos días” (there is no possible translation of Championship Meeting in 
our language — it means a tournament of diverse athletic games established by the Football 
Association) (El Mercurio de Valparaiso, 10 Jan. 1898). Sometimes just naming these sports 
was difficult enough. In its early days in 1899, the “Guayaquil de Sport” club advertised in the 
press that it had “spent this morning in our first exercise of the game of Bare-Ball, repeating 
it in the afternoon with a better result. On Sunday, members are invited to try the game of 
Cruket”. Newspapers did not reveal how the members got on with either Bare-Ball or Cruket, 
and what similarity they might have had with baseball or cricket (El Grito del Pueblo, 23 Jan. 
1900).
Matthew Brown
572 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 572-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
Methodology
The copying and adoption of these new practices would be good evidence for the pheno-menon that is variously called “Eurocentrism”, “cultural dependence” or “coloniality” in 
South America, which is to say a continued belief amongst previously colonized peoples that 
social practices emanating from the former metropolitan centres must, by their very nature and 
origin, be superior and worthy of emulation (Clevenger, 2017; Mangan, 2002; Buarque and 
Fontes, 2014). There is evidence for this attitude in other spheres of life, of course: in the words 
of one Colombian journalist, for example, “Europe is the centre of the greatest civilization the 
world has ever seen, and we cannot be indifferent to its current affairs, as we have received 
everything from there” (El Telegrama, 16 Oct. 1886).
The methodology of this article was to locate and analyse all of the translations of the 
rules of Association Football (FA) published in Spanish and Portuguese in South America 
between the codification of the rules in 1863 and 1914. Because most scholars of sport 
have not concerned themselves with the translators, the dataset is necessarily fragmentary 
and incomplete (for example, there is no information for Bolivia, Paraguay or Venezuela). I 
have supplemented work in secondary scholarship with primary evidence data-collection in 
archives across the continent. Before moving on to discuss these texts, I want to set up the 
comparative case of cricket, a sporting code which was already being played in many parts 
of South America before 1863, but which never achieved the level of popularity of symbolic 
meaning accrued by association football in the continent. The comparison with cricket sets up 
the analytical angle for study of the translators of football.
The untranslatable nature of cricket
Cricket developed its codes and rules in the 1700s as part of the transformation of English society, which Norbert Elias and Eric Dunning (1986: 167, 173) identified as 
representing “a profound sublimatory transformation of feeling” in which self-restraint was 
required and valued in order to “steadfastly renounce the use of violence” in politics as well 
as entertainment. What is now called “the spirit of the game” revolved around patience, 
respect for rules and delayed gratification — a code of conduct that was often spoken of as 
being more important than the game itself, and was adopted by imperial agents as inherent 
to the civilizing ethos of the British colonial project (Malcolm, 2012).While generally neglected 
from South American sports histories, cricket existed on the margins throughout our period, 
occasionally stepping into the spotlight. Cricket was played in Georgetown, the capital of 
Translating the Rules of Football in South America, 1863-1914
573Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 573-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
Britain’s only formal British possession in South America, in the mid-1800s, and Demerara 
(the team representing the colony of Guiana, today Guyana) played Barbados in first-class 
fixtures in 1865 (Beckles, 1998). Here, as elsewhere in Britain’s Caribbean colonies, cricket 
was introduced as a strictly hierarchical form of separation and control, but adopted and even-
tually mastered by the local populations of black and Indian heritage. As C.L.R. James wrote 
in Beyond a Boundary, cricket was both a sport and a form of drama with an extraordinary 
representative capacity: “the long hours … the measured ritualism and the varied and inten-
sive physical activity which take place within it… leaves human personality on view” (1963: 
194). In the late 1800s, Guyana was far from being the exception in South America. Stitching 
together referencesfrom a very fragmented set of sources we can see that cricket was being 
played in most seaports where British merchants were found. The sources suggest that it was 
cricket that set the foundations for football and its international, representative nature as it 
grew out of cricket clubs and grounds in the 1890s (for example, Chilian Times, 7 Jan. 1882; 
Magellan Times, 7 Jan. 1914). But there was little attempt to proselytize the game or found 
new clubs amongst the local population. It seems like cricketers did not necessarily trust that 
locally-born South Americans could behave according to the strict honour code of their game, 
or want to encourage them to do so.
Cricket, like cockfights, bullfights, and other forms of artistic practice in sport, were, 
to quote Clifford Geertz, (1972: 30) “not merely reflections of a pre-existing sensibility 
analogically represented; they are positive agents in the creation and maintenance of such a 
sensibility”. The type of sporting practice that South Americans chose to practice was part of 
how they chose to represent themselves. The rules of Cricket were never translated to Spanish 
or Portuguese. Cricket was understood as a game that was too complicated and untranslatable, 
and also as a game that did not want to be understood by those it had not invited in. 
An attempt was made by the newspaper Correio Paulistano, which provided an 
abbreviated guide in Portuguese in 1882 translating some of the terminology for “the curiosity 
of those who don’t understand, so that they might attend a game and enjoy it”. According 
to the author, who was clearly not a native speaker of English, two sticks were placed in the 
ground at each end of the pitch, joined with a small pole. The object of the game was “throw 
a ball so that it hits the sticks and makes the adversary’s wicket fall down”. The ball, it noted, 
was “as hard as iron”. The bat was a “raqueta”. The bowler was a “boller”, suggesting that 
the translator was a Brazilian rather than a cricket native. Players should wear flannel clothing 
and protect their legs with “a type of shield, or leggings”. The “match” was divided in two 
halves or “innings”. When the ball is thrown at the “batter” they should use their “skill, 
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strength and agility” to hit it as far away as possible. Yet, translations could only go so far. All 
parts of the game were said to be governed by “all manner of conventions” to be agreed by 
the players themselves, none of which were discussed or interpreted by the bemused Correio 
journalist (8 Sep. 1882).
Translating football before 1900
Most of the translations and annotated collections of rules were pamphlets sponsored by local clubs or local associations. These institutions were the modern heirs to the 
exclusive city centre gentlemen’s social clubs of mid-century, such as the Club de la Union in 
Guayaquil, the British Library in Buenos Aires, and the Club Americano in Bogotá, whose 1866 
statutes stated that its aim was to “provide its members with recreations fit for a civilized 
society”, and that the only games that were appropriate to this end were the likes of billiards, 
chess, dominoes, draughts, whist and other card-games (for Caracas, Venezuela, see the image 
of billiards in El Cojo Ilustrado, 1 Aug. 1901). These social clubs took up sports as an extension 
of their recreational activities, and also used them to promote their other activities within 
society. New sports meant rules and disciplines and physical vigour, as well as fun, gambling, 
and civilization like their old pursuits. Clubs sometimes published the rules of the game as an 
appendix to their statutes, which were handed to new members. But the statutes were mainly 
concerned with delineating who could or could not be a member, often prohibiting member-
ship of more than one body simultaneously or clarifying personal characteristics around drink, 
income or clothing, more than they were with the sports themselves. 
Histories of South American football have habitually ignored the first translators of the 
rules of the game, because of a fan’s-eye preference for the simple idea that Association 
Football is a magically simple game which requires no tuition or guidance in order to play 
it. Yet, the difference between the lack of translated rules of cricket, which did not become 
popular in South America, and the multiplicity of published translations of the rules of 
Association Football, suggest that hard work and effort on the part of its promoters may 
have played an important role. The persistent translation and publication of the rules 
also suggests a sense that people were not playing the game properly, and that correctly 
interpreted, translated, and disseminated the rules of the game might be an aid to civilizing 
societies and the games they played in their free time (Elias and Dunning, 1986). In the next 
section I present the translations I have located, along with a preliminary analysis of their 
potential significance.1
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In Buenos Aires, where we detected the earliest games of football, it is likely that rules 
and codes circulated orally, and through English versions brought and discussed by migrants. 
Thanks to the work of Victor Raffo and others, we know that most of the football played in 
Buenos Aires in the 1870s and 1880s was of the carrying variety we now associate with 
Rugby. No translations of the rules into Spanish have been located. In 1869, the Buenos Ayres 
Football Club simply noted ‘the Committee has altered the rules to permit the carrying of 
the ball when it is caught before it touches the floor’ (The Standard, 20 May 1868, in Raffo, 
2005: 79). By 1874, football was being played in Buenos Aires according to rules “which 
differed from any existing code” and the Secretary of the Buenos Ayres Football Club urged 
“the adoption of one of two recognized sets of Laws now used in England in preference to 
continuing our own of last year” (The Weekly Standard, 13 May 1874, in Raffo, 2005: 153-
154). No written record of any changes made survives. It was only in 1903 that the Argentine 
Football Association published a translation of the rules, in its Guide to the Football Field.2
The first full translation of the rules of Association Football into Spanish or Portuguese 
comes not in one of the “major” South American footballing countries, but from Colombia. 
In 1892, a close translation of the 1863 Rules of Football was published in a newspaper 
in Bogotá, Colombia, by the United States military officer Henry Rowan Lemly. Already a 
published translator of military techniques and, later, of history, Lemly translated every term 
to Spanish, leaving no English words at all (El Telegrama, 23 Jun. 1892). He sought to render 
the game intelligible to his monolingual military students, as part of his mission to create a 
disciplined national corps of officers.
Regional histories of Colombian sport have competed to find the first football match in 
Atlantic port cities of Barranquilla and Santa Marta, in Cali and Pasto in the South, and in 
the capital Bogotá (Ruiz Patiño, 2010; Lopez Velez, 2010). In all of these places evidence has 
been found of cosmopolitan traders, elites who had been schooled in Europe, and one or two 
railway workers, reflecting some of the routes taken by football elsewhere in the continent. 
But Lemly’s pioneer as a translator and military educator is revealing of the often under-
appreciated role of U.S sporting influence, and the agency of the military in sports promotion 
for national ends. 
Lemly knew a fair bit about the conflict between so-called civilization and barbarism 
which so concerned sports promoters in South America before hearrived in Colombia. He 
served in the “Indian Wars”, which extended the territorial reach of the United States in the 
1870s, and he personally witnessed the surrender and murder of Lakota leader known as 
“Crazy Horse” in 1877, writing a widely-disseminated account of it in the New York Sun. 
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A few years later he was in Colombia working at the newly-reestablished Escuela Militar, 
promoting gymnastics and physical exercise as a way of promoting a vigorous rigour amongst 
the country’s officer corp. With the 1885-86 civil war bringing about a centralist Constitution 
and renewed attempts to foment a national identity, Lemly was in prime position to shape this 
national culture from the centre. Like many Colombian leaders involved in this project, Lemly 
thought that literacy was key to educating, civilizing, and Colombianizing a largely barbarian 
people. He translated the military tactics of Emory Upton, wrote about history and indigenous 
cultures, and studied translations. Unlike Miguel Antonio Caro, the president, grammarian, and 
translator, he persuaded to watch his first sporting experiments, he also believed fervently in 
a role for physical exercise and discipline in forging the nation (Arias-Escobar, 2017; Esquivel 
Triana, 2017; Deas, 1992; Polania, 2015). But Lemly did not leave the same legacy as football 
pioneers elsewhere. He returned to the U.S. and made only sporadic visits to Colombia after 
that, as a military advisor, arms trader, and historian (Lemly, 1884, 1891, 1901, 1910, 1923).
Hybrid codes around 1900
A s the work of Tony Collins (2018) reminds us, there was no hegemonic footballing code anywhere in the world around 1900. Rugby, Association, Australian, American, and 
Gaellic rules co-existed and interacted with pre-existing folk footballs and street ball-games. 
Historians have tended to focus their attention on digging up references to the versions of foo-
tball that appeared most similar to the forms that later became hegemonic internationally. But 
when we allow ourselves to be guided by the surviving sources, we can see that football was 
played in many different ways, demonstrating the significant influence of individual mediators 
and translators, and their own personal experiences and preferences. 
The example of the first translation of the Rules of Football in Ecuador provides us with 
some good insight here. The publication of these rules by Guayaquil’s El Grito del Pueblo 
newspaper on three consecutive Sundays (28 Jan., 4 Feb., 11 Feb. 1900) is cited (though not 
reproduced) by all the serious studies of the origins of Association Football in the country. 
But it is clear from the beginning of the text, however, that this was not a close translation 
of Association Football rules like Lemly’s in Colombia eight years earlier, but something else 
entirely — a hybrid sport drawing on Association, Rugby, and perhaps even the Eton Field 
Game. Rule 1 suggested that sides may have between 10 and 40 players each — though 
always divided equally. Rule 2 suggests “a big oval ball of 30cm by 38cm” which “must be 
extremely solid in order to resist the kicks that it receives”. The translator adds the following 
advice on local ball-manufacture: “Ordinarily it is made from a rubber bladder enclosed in a 
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tight sack or leather casing. The best are those which one makes oneself with a pig’s bladder, 
which are stitched by a shoemaker with ‘four pieces’ of calf’s leather strongly stitched, riveted 
with a hunting shoe, and finished in an opening with a small tie”. In Rule 3, the translator 
notes that a rope should connect the two goal posts, but that “this is a complication which 
many serious players do not bother with, and they are happy to judge themselves whether 
the football has passed through at the appropriate height”. Rule 5 notes that “the match will 
usually be made up of several ‘chukkas’ of three points each, in a period of time to be agreed 
beforehand”. Rule 6 stated that “the ‘football’ should never be taken from an opponent with 
the hands, although it can be received, carried and deposited in the goal”.3 Rule 8 reveals a 
way of playing more familiar today as “touch rugby”: “The aim of the game for each player is 
to make the ball pass behind the two posts of the opposing goal, or at least behind the line of 
the same name. To this end, all methods are valid, which is to say, it can be thrown there with 
a kick, or taken and carried towards the goal. On the other hand, the adversaries can chase 
the carrier, they can try to block his passage, to detain him, in a word, making it impossible 
for him to fulfil his design. But courtesy demands that the chase does not degenerate into 
pugilism, in body-to-body fights or bundles, as frequently occurs in countries of brutal and 
gross customs. The player who is waiting for the fugitive will be content, therefore, to touch 
the football shouting “Touched!”. The intricacies of scrimmaging, or “forming a circle”, 
were described at length. The game being “translated” here was a mixed-methods game 
combining elements of various kicking and carrying codes — not an outlier, but part of what 
Collins (2018: 88) calls “an international continuum of variations that stretched across the 
early football-playing world”. 
As the historians Navarro et al. relate (2014: 16), “in these years in Ecuador football 
was almost an extreme sport: there were no pitches, balls were made of wound-up rags, and 
the players used the game as an excuse to practice boxing. Their lack of basic understanding 
of football means that matches are decided throwing punches and rocks”. With its oval 
ball, scrummaging and touchdowns it looks much more like Rugby Union Football. Some 
of its features, particularly relating to “touch”, shows strong affinities with the Eton Field 
Game (Eton College, 2007). Discomfort with the physicality of rugby, and its potential to 
precipitate fights or hand-to-hand combat “as frequently occurs in countries of brutal and 
gross customs”, perhaps explains the preference for the “touch” tackling system used at 
Eton College. The division of the match into three “chicos” or chukkas is akin to polo, not 
association football, which has never experimented with more than one interval. It seems that 
the author/translator produced this document from memory, perhaps even fusing elements 
of games they had played or heard or read about. The most likely author is Juan Alfredo 
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Wright, a Guayaquil merchant and grandson of one of Bolívar’s admirals. He was born in 
Guayaquil on 24 July 1882, and received his secondary education at the Colegio Vicente 
Rocafuerte. He studied in Lima, where he is reputed to have encountered football for the 
first time by joining the Club Union Cricket. He returned to Guayaquil from Callao in August 
1899, bringing “the first football to Ecuador” (Roque Salcedo, 1947: 1; Navarro et al., 2014: 
15). He does not appear on the Eton College Registers, and I have not been able to find out 
yet where he went to school. Allowing for some inaccuracies in the dating of his education 
presented in his biographies, it is not inconceivable that he returned from a spell at a British 
school in 1899 or 1900 and published the rules of a game he played at school. The version of 
football translated, published, and played in Guayaquil in 1900 was a hybrid form, a mixture 
of the codes of association, rugby, and private school football still circulating and competing 
with each other in this period (Kitching, 2015). This example demonstrates very clearly the 
global dimensionsof those competing codes, rather than, as has often been presumed in the 
historiography, a model in which Association Football became the dominant code and then 
asserted its hegemony in the British informal empire in South America.
Increasing commonalities 
The first translations of the rules of football in the River Plate appear to have been under-taken from around 1898, at the stage where the sport was first being deliberately popu-
larised beyond the English-speaking communities. The years around 1898-1900 saw a peak of 
translations of the English FA’s rules, all apparently conducted independently without mutual 
reference. First, the Reglas del Juego de Football were published by Albion Football Club in 
Montevideo in 1898.4 The most likely translator of the Rules in Uruguay was Bristol-born Henry 
Castle Ayre.5 An English teacher at the English High School in Montevideo, Henry Castle Ayre 
was already a published translator of historical works, and developed his own “Ayre Method” 
for learning English as a foreign language. He followed the FA rules very closely, without anno-
tations or commentary, providing English originals in italics and brackets after the first mention 
of new words, for example “puntapie de esquina (corner kick)”. His innovation was the use of 
“valle” to describe the goal-area and its extension “guarda valle” as goal-keeper. In Peru, the 
Rules of Football appear to have been first published in Spanish in El Sport (7 Aug. 1899, cited 
in Muñoz, 2001: 229), with the commentary that “football produced freedom-loving men, 
respectful of authority and law, self-sufficient and full of the spirit of association”. In 1901, 
the first translation of the Rules of Football into Chilean Spanish appear to have been made by 
J.D. Sieveking, in an edition prologued by the magistrate José Alfonso in 1901 (who in 1903 
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became president of the first Football Association of Santiago). Alfonso particularly valued the 
“strict discipline, constant vigilance and strategy” required by the game (cited in Modiano, 
1997: 82, also discussed in Santa Cruz, 1996). Chilean commentators constantly admired the 
use of “an iron hand” to maintain “the strictest discipline” in matches (El Sportsman, 19 May 
1907, in Modiano, 1997: 96).
It was at this point that the translations started to dedicate more time and space to 
explaining football’s laws around violent conduct (particularly laws nine and ten, which were 
amended by the International Football Association Board — IFAB — in this period). IFAB 
was a committee with representation of the English, Welsh, Irish, and Scottish associations, 
and thereby reflected the dominance of the English language on the rules of football, as yet 
unchallenged by the rise of FIFA (Fédération Internationale de Football Association) in the 
first decade of the new century. The translations both coincide with and were designed for 
the growing popularization of the game, and were intended both to keep the versions played 
locally in line with international norms as imagined in Great Britain, and to control working-
class, migrant, and non-white footballers, and the violence it was feared they would bring 
into the game. The Argentine Football Association in 1903 (34-5) ran the Spanish and English 
versions in parallel columns on the same page to make it plainer how close the translation was 
to the original, especially useful for its bilingual members.
The Guides to sports published in South America at the beginning of the twentieth-
century were principally concerned with promoting participation than in fighting linguistic 
battles. The Guides were hybrid texts, explaining where, how, and why to play sports properly, 
and certainly not simple translations of a British model. As they took with the language of 
sports, translators attempted to preserve the cultural ethos which they inferred to be inherent 
in the games. A good example is the Guia de Football produced in São Paulo, Brazil, by Mario 
Cardim and Luiz Fonseca in 1906 (in Gambeta, 2014: 49-181). The book included the Statutes 
of the Sao Paulo Football League, the rules of Association Football and guidance for referees, 
a discussion of the “physical and moral qualities of the footballer”, fixtures and records of the 
São Paulo Football League, including details on each club and on tram timetables to enable the 
public’s attendance at matches, statistics, and information for the Brazilian National Football 
Championship and schools football. It featured photographs of key players and discussion 
of their playing style. The approach to the language of sport was creative and littered with 
English and French words. Cardim and Fonseca kept many English-terms in their text, such 
as teams, forwards, match, goal, corner-kick, throw-in, incorporating their own translations 
and explanations into the text on first mention, as in their translation of the second law of 
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the game, “Feito um goal, o lado que perdeu tem direito ao ponta-pe inicial (kick-off)”. Their 
text featured many original terms alongside translations, as is illustrated by their annotated 
map of the pitch, the Campo de Football. This was a hybrid text like many others. Cardim and 
Fonseca probably drew on the work of their colleague Hans Nobiling, the founder of S.C. 
Germania, who brought German copies of the statutes of the Hamburg Football League with 
him to Brazil, and was a prime mover in the organization of the Paulista League (Gambeta, 
2014: 39). They also drew on the work of the French author Ernest Weber (1907), which was 
reprinted several times in Rio de Janeiro in those years. Although the identity of the translator 
or translators into Portuguese are not known, this does further weaken the claim of England 
and English as the common origin point of South American Association Football. (Belford 
Duarte, who played for Mackenzie College, is sometimes held to have translated the rules to 
from English to Portuguese in 1902, as in Enciclopédia, 2001:35.) The Guia de Football was 
heavily littered with English phrases, with a lot of attention focused on explaining the degree 
of physical violence that was allowed, hence the phrasing that “Nao e permittido a nehum 
jogador passer rap-ponta-pe, teira, dar ponta-pes ou pular sobre o adversario. [...] A charge 
e permittido mas nao de um modo violento ou perigoso. Nenhum jogador pode empurrar um 
adversario pelas costas salvo quando este estiver empedindo um adversario” (charging is 
permitted but not in a violent or dangerous way) (in Gambeta, 2014, 39-40). 
Sometimes the translators brought a new word directly into the Portuguese, which is the 
case with dribbling, which became and remained a Portuguese verb, driblar. This came from the 
French — the dribleur is noted to be renowned for their trucs or tricks. Yet, the translation of 
the rules and the explanation of the game were explicitly locally- as well as globally-situated. 
In their discussion of goalkeepers (2014: 106), Cardim and Fonseca note that “Cruisbank”, 
the Fluminense goal-keeper of 1902-04, “revolutionized the defending of our goal-keepers” 
through his innovative handling, and that “today there are two goal-keepers who live up to 
this standard in São Paulo — Thompson of SC Internacional and Satler of Mackenzie College”. 
As the diagrams of the playing field reproduced in many of these texts clearly show, the 
translation of sports terms became an issue of naming and identifying new spaces. The pitch 
itself was a political, as well as a geographical space.
Indigenous football
There was no hegemonic football code in South America in the first decades of the 1900s, as a myopic focus on BuenosAires and the triumphs of Alumni and its British pioneers 
might have us believe. As the examples discussed above have shown, individual promoters, 
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translators, and mediators created distinct sporting cultures in many different spaces. In Chile 
we find perhaps the most creative translation of the Rules of Association Football, dating from 
1914 when Manuel Manquilef published the rules of the Mapuche sport of “Trümen”. Rather 
than adopting the British sport and preaching its values to his peers, Manquilef used it to 
legitimize the indigenous sporting cultures of his ancestors with a broad spectrum of cultural 
comparators. He translated trümen into Spanish as “El foot-ball”. In his publication, part of an 
extensive study of Mapuche sports and pastimes, Maniquilet published a version of the rules of 
football in Mapudungun down the left side of his page, and Spanish on the right. It describes 
four-a-side football, and shows significant continuity with other Mapuche sports in its scoring 
system. It includes a kind of scrimmaging but with no hands. A point was scored by getting 
the ball over the end of the pitch. Here is my English translation of Manquilef’s seven rules:
1. This game is very ancient and powerfully develops physical strengths. 
2. Trumen is similar to foot-ball, differing only in the number of players which, instead of 
eleven, are four per side.
3. The ball is a large oval of dried grasses wrapped in a very resistant leather. The ball also 
used to be made of thread and leather.
4. Two sides are formed with four players each. The referee gives the signal to begin, and 
the Indian carries the ball with their feet. It is a foul if they use their hands. 
5. When the ball is controlled by the feet, a terrible struggle around it is mounted, and the 
strongest leave their opponents on the ground. They go on to reach the gate (puerta), which 
is the signal for the end of the field. 
6. The side which scores four times in a row is considered to be the winner. Until then, the 
losing side can continue to reduce the deficit or reach a draw. 
7. For example, if one side scores 3 and the other 1, the winning side is leading by two 
scores. In this way, the game can be very entertaining and can continue for a long time. The 
game of trumun is also known as the tropezon, the bundle, because of the falls to which the 
Indian is subjected (1914: 76, 125).
By his repeated use of Foot-Ball in Spanish/English to name and reference the game, 
Manquilef was arguing for its similarity with and equivalence to football. But he is also, less 
obviously, translating Association Football into towards an approximation of a Mapuche sport. 
He is making claims in both directions, that Trümen is like football, and also that football is like 
Trümen. His reference to an oval ball, and the references to bundling and scoring by reaching 
the end of the field show far more similarities to the carrying codes than to Association Football.
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Manquilef’s publication formed part of a wider continental wave of translations around 
1910-13, and all of these sought to explain and control the “problem” of rough play, which 
was a legacy of the carrying-codes such as Rugby. Some translators and promoters looked to 
minimise physical contact, whereas others sought to limit, explain and harness it. A Chilean 
Physical Education teacher working in the capital’s Instituto Nacional, Guillermo Martinez, 
translated the updated Rules of Football in 1910, published by the Centro Editorial de Sport. 
He proclaimed his version to be “a faithful translation of the Rules of Football of the English 
Association’ making them the ‘last word in the question of the rules of the beautiful game 
of foot-ball which the youth of our country have embraced with such enthusiasm’”. Martinez 
(1910: 1-5) saw his translation as an act of accommodation between cultures. “We have 
managed to adapt the English expressions and phrases to Chilean language, by means of 
conserving those which have entered into general use and acceptance, and which already form 
part of our daily vocabulary”. Martinez lamented that in 1906 the Diener publishing house had 
produced a translation of the rules in which “the lack of command of the Chilean language 
was obvious” (I have not been able to locate a copy of this translation). “We believe that our 
sportsmen who play foot-ball will understand and appreciate the effort that we have made to 
explain in accessible language the rigorous, laconic and sometimes confusing intricacies of the 
English Football Association’s rules of the game. Nevertheless, these rules govern foot-ball all 
around the world and more than 10 million people play the game according to its regulations”. 
Each rule was supplemented with guidance for referees, for linesmen, for club secretaries, and 
for players, often extending to several pages and making reference back to the findings of the 
IFAB. Martinez may also have been the author of the 1912 text, cited in Modiano (1997: 37), 
with its admonition that “football is a violent game, and therefore players should avoid any 
intentionally brutal action”. In 1913, the newspaper La Cachimba Sportiva aimed to further 
disseminate the rules of the sport, and knowledge of correct sporting conduct, amongst the 
working population, and may have published further translations (Modiano, 1997: note 197).
Towards Homogenization after 1910
In Ecuador, in 1912, the English FA regulations were published for the first time (Reglamen-to, 1912). The unnamed translator provided the English original of all terms in brackets 
after his translation, as in Rule 2 “Los ganadores de la rifada (‘toss’) tienen derecho de elegir 
lado o dar el primer puntapié (‘kick-off’)”, indicating their perception that readers would not 
necessarily be familiar with the original version. The pamphlet featured an “Explanation of 
Terms”, which clarified the meaning of Place Kick, Free Kick, Carrying, Knocking on, Handling, 
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Tripping, Holding and Touch. These specialist translations, which sought to make intelligible 
the English Football Association Rules, and to guide footballers in their correct observance, 
were not the only translations being made. These translations, and the accompanying com-
ments, demonstrate clearly the process of regulating and limiting the more physical carrying 
game that was first played in South America.
The eventual printing of the rules of Association Football in Ecuador 1912 was the catalyst 
to the formation of leagues and competitions, which had not been instituted beforehand 
because of a lack of common regulations. By retaining English terminology, the translator 
hoped to retain the privileged position of the English language within a way of thinking about 
football, whilst making it as accessible as possible — within that limitation — to non- English 
speakers. This was a large step away from the translator of the 1900 rules, who had produced 
a hybrid text, full of commentary and intervention, on top of a hybrid set of rules. In 1912, a 
match took place between teams from Guayaquil and Quito using the newly-translated rules. 
The referee was George Jatton, an “employee of the railway company” and presumably the 
same “Hatton” remembered by some oral histories of early football of Quito. This makes him 
a good candidate to be the translator (Baquerizo and Carrera, 2012: 22; La Hora, 2000). 
Another alternative would be Consul Alfred Cartwright, who had an increasingly visible role 
in the promotion of sport in Guayaquil post-1912, as one of the sponsorsof the Asociación 
de Empleados which took a lead in organising competitive sports in Ecuador (Roque Salcedo, 
1947: 6; El Telegrama, 7 Nov. 1912). 
The role of South American sporting administrators in civilizing football was only partially 
picked up by outsiders at the time. What later became admiration at rhythm, technique, and 
athleticism was initially perceived as a lack of “ruggedness” or propensity for rough play. 
Elmer Mitchell’s influential 1922 work “Racial Traits in Athletics” stated that “the South 
American athlete has not the physique, environment or disposition which makes for the 
champion athlete”. But what Mitchell and others failed to note was that South American 
teachers, translators, and players were promoting versions of sports, particularly football, that 
limited physical violence on the playing field. They were consciously “civilizing” the game for 
their own ends. The number of independent national translations published between 1910 
and 1912 (for example Reglas, 1910; Oliveira, 1912; Manquilef, 1912, Reglamento, 1912) 
responds to the coming together of a shared continental trajectory as the games’ international 
framework began to coalesce around FIFA. 
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Conclusions
The abundance of translations of the rules of football codes in South America before 1914 demonstrates the rich variety of sporting cultures that emerged in the continent 
before the formation of CONMEBOL (Confederación Sudamericana de Fútbol ) in 1916, and 
the subsequent gradual efforts of FIFA to homogenise the game to facilitate international 
competition. While we have identified many international sporting networks here, testament 
to the global history approach adopted, it is important to recognize limits. There is not much 
evidence of transnational connections within South America in this area. Separate surviving 
independent translations from English language originals have been located in Argentina, 
Uruguay, Colombia, Chile, Ecuador, and Brazil, and it seems likely that others exist too. The 
translators included British pioneers as we might expect, such as Henry Castle Ayre in Uruguay, 
but this influential group was much more diverse than that, including a North American (Henry 
Rowan Lemly in Colombia), and migrants of German background (Nobiling and Sieveking), 
and native Spanish and Portuguese speakers (Cardim, Fonseca, Martinez). The Ecuadorian 
case is suggestive (but nothing more) of links along the Pacific coast. Various cities, regions, 
and states adopted and adapted the game according to their own pre-existing sporting and 
political cultures. As the case of Manquilef in Chile shows, the processes of translation and 
mediation studied here went beyond English, Spanish, and Portuguese.
The primacy of English in association football was subject to all sorts of influences and 
pressures. By the time of the first FIFA World Cup, held in Uruguay in 1930, the organizers 
recognized the existence of multiple understandings of the rules of Association Football, as 
a result of these diverse trajectories from an original football that had itself encompassed 
competing versions of how much the ball could be carried, and how often and in what ways 
the opponent could be manhandled. The tournament regulations in 1930 stated that the 
rules of the International Board would be used, and that if there was any doubt over their 
interpretation, the English language version would be definitive (in Carbonnell, 1931: 16). 
Before it started, the Organizing Committee took the trouble of passing a resolution on “Good 
Play” (Buen Juego): “It was resolved to pass a note to the World Cup referees, so that they are 
aware that on the field of play, they should ensure the faithful adherence to the rules of the 
game, in order to avoid any potential dangers to the physical integrity of the players”. Here, 
after thirty years of working to limit physical violence on their respective pitches at home, the 
South American organizers made this their final word to the representatives of the laws of the 
game (in Carbonnell, 1931: 20).
Translating the Rules of Football in South America, 1863-1914
585Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 585-588, setembro-dezembro 2019
We still know far too little about the role of referees in shaping football cultures in the 
early years of the sport. Historians have preferred to investigate players, fans, and playing 
spaces in their search for the origins of the traditions and identities that continue to shape our 
lives in the twenty-first century. This article has sought to bring the role of translators out of 
the darkness and into the global history of football and its social significance. The next step 
will be to investigate the reception of those sporting rules, through the history of referees and 
the always incomplete implementation of the law. Referees had to interpret the laws of the 
game, and in order to do that, the interpreters relied on the hidden labour of the translators. 
 
Notes
1 Of course this argument is based on just the surviving fragment of the contemporary source material. I do 
not doubt that very many more translations of the rules of soccer survive in club libraries and private collec-
tions that I have not accessed, and I hope that this article serves to bring others to light. I am grateful to the 
reviewers of this article for bringing further potential sources to my attention,
2 Held in the Sergio Lodise Collection in Buenos Aires, kindly shared with me by Chris Bolsmann.
3 This is an ambiguous translation — use of terms rester for to take, literally to “wrest”; tomar also to take, 
translated here as “received”.
4 I am very grateful to Martin Da Cruz for sharing this document with me.
5 Henry Castle Ayre, born in Bedminster, Bristol, in the first quarter of 1852. Somerset births ref: 5C/768. In 
the 1871 UK Census he was living in Denmark Place, Horfield, Clifton, Bristol, with his brothers and sisters.
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A r t i g o
Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 589-608, setembro-dezembro 2019
“Os Leões em África”: futebol e política no 
Império Colonial português (1954)
“Lions in Africa”: football and politics in the Portuguese 
Colonial Empire (1954)
“Leones en África”: fútbol y política en el Imperio Colonial 
portugués (1954)
João Manuel Casquinha Malaia SantosI*
 
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1590/S2178-14942019000300003
I Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. Santa Maria – RS, Brasil.
* Professor do Departamento de História da Universidade Federal de Santa Maria. (jmalaia@gmail.com) 
ORCID id: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7154-3860
Artigo recebido em 1º de julho de 2019 e aprovado para a publicação em 8 de outubro de 2019.
João Manuel Casquinha Malaia Santos 
590 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 590-608, setembro-dezembro 2019
Resumo
Num conturbado contexto político e de valorização da excepcionalidade do colonialismo português por parte 
do governo salazarista, o Sporting Clube de Portugal fez uma excursão de jogos de futebol às suas duas 
maiores colônias na África, Angola e Moçambique, com atuações também em Joanesburgo e Leopoldville. 
Por meio da análise de periódicos da imprensa da metrópole e das colônias africanas, buscamos entender 
as relações entre o futebol e a política colonial portuguesa, a difusão do discurso do lusotropicalismo e da 
exaltação das obras do “gênio colonial português”, além das tensões, esportivas e raciais, dessa experiência 
de convívio imperial.
Palavras-chave: Colonialismo português; Excursões; Futebol; Racismo; África.
Abstract
In a troubled political context and in times of appreciation of the exceptionality of Portuguese colonialism by 
the Salazar government, Sporting Clube de Portugal made a tour for football matchesin its largest colonies 
in Africa, Angola and Mozambique, with performances in Johannesburg and Leopoldville as well. Through the 
analysis of press journals in the metropolis and the African colonies, we sought to understand the relations 
between football and Portuguese colonial politics, the diffusion of lusotropicalismo discourse and the exalta-
tion of the works of the “Portuguese colonial genius”, besides the racial and sports tensions of this imperial 
experience.
Keywords: Portuguese colonialism; Tours; Football; Racism; Africa.
Resumen
En un contexto político difícil y en tiempo de apreciación de la singularidad del colonialismo portugués por el 
gobierno de Salazar, Sporting Clube de Portugal hizo una gira con partidos de fútbol en las dos colonias más 
grandes de África, Angola y Mozambique, con actuaciones también en Johannesburgo y Leopoldville. A través 
del análisis de la prensa periódica de la metrópoli y de las colonias africanas, tratamos de comprender las 
relaciones entre el fútbol y la política colonial portuguesa, la propagación de expresión del lusotropicalismo y 
la exaltación de las obras del “genio colonial portugués”, más allá de las tensiones, deportivas y raciales, de 
esta experiencia de convivencia imperial.
Palabras clave: Colonialismo portugués; Giras; Fútbol; Racismo; África.
 
“Os Leões em África”: futebol e política no Império Colonial português (1954)
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Introdução
Na primeira metade dos anos 1950, a equipe de futebol do Sporting Clube de Portugal foi a principal equipe portuguesa e a mais engajada em disputas internacionais. Entre 
as temporadas 1950/1951 e 1953/1954, o clube conquistou os quatro títulos nacionais por-
tugueses de futebol, sagrando-se ainda campeão da Taça de Portugal também na temporada 
1953/1954. Entre 1951 e 1953, a equipe visitou o Brasil para torneios e amistosos interna-
cionais. Ao fim da temporada 1953/1954, entre julho e agosto, o Sporting, cujo símbolo é um 
leão, fez uma digressão pelo continente africano para jogos amistosos organizados por suas 
filiais em Angola e Moçambique. Além das atuações nas colônias portuguesas, realizou jogos 
em Joanesburgo, contra a seleção do Transvaal do Sul, e no Congo belga, contra a seleção 
de Leopoldville.
Os resultados e os placares mostram superioridade da equipe da capital portuguesa. 
Foram 12 jogos, com 11 vitórias e um empate, 55 gols marcados e 14 sofridos. No entanto, 
os números podem enganar, e olhar apenas para o que aconteceu no campo não revela o 
significado dessa viagem. Para o presidente do clube, Carlos Cecílio Nunes Gois Mota, secre-
tário da Procuradoria-Geral da República e que pertenceu à Legião Portuguesa, milícia oficial 
do governo salazarista (Madeira, 2007), a digressão dos “leões” na África era um projeto de 
propaganda política. Mota acompanhou pessoalmente a delegação e mobilizou personagens 
do poder colonial e da imprensa, tanto da metrópole quanto das colônias.
A viagem aconteceu num dos períodos mais delicados da política colonial de Manuel Sala-
zar. Em meio a um debate internacional sobre o processo de condenação à situação colonial na 
África e na Ásia, o governo português buscava navegar “contra o vento” (Alexandre, 2017) e criar 
elementos para fazer com que suas colônias se pensassem como parte do Império. Foi o período 
da exaltação do lusotropicalismo, o conjunto de narrativas a partir da nação imperial que expli-
cavam o excepcionalismo colonial português, “narrativas que nomearam, edificaram, retificaram, 
codificaram e finalmente reproduziram o pensamento imperial/colonial” (Ribeiro, 2013: 544).
A esse conjunto de ideias, juntavam-se medidas do governo salazarista e celebrações 
que pudessem envolver representantes de todo o Império. A alteração da nomenclatura de 
colônias para províncias pela Lei Orgânica do Ultramar (1953) e a mudança no Estatuto do 
Indígena, criando a categoria de assimilado para os africanos (1954), eram exemplos das 
ações do governo no sentido de mostrar um colonialismo mais brando. Foi também o tempo 
das celebrações dos 25 anos do governo Salazar (1953) e da viagem do presidente português 
Craveiro Lopes às colônias africanas (1954), eventos em que ficava clara a atuação da impren-
sa do ultramar no sentido da adesão ao programa político salazarista.
João Manuel Casquinha Malaia Santos 
592 Estudos Históricos Rio de Janeiro, vol 32, nº 68, p. 592-608, setembro-dezembro 2019
Todo esse processo, no entanto, também sofria reveses que revelavam a violência e 
as fragilidades do colonialismo português. Em fevereiro de 1953, em São Tomé, o tenente-
-coronel Carlos de Souza Gorgulho, a mando do governo colonial, comandou o que ficou 
conhecido como “Massacre de Batepá”, após uma recusa de trabalho dos forros por conta 
das condições precárias de trabalho impostas pelo governo colonial. O evento vitimou “um 
número indeterminado de forros, o grupo etnocultural dominante em São Tomé e Príncipe” 
(Rodrigues, 2018: 63).
O contexto político em que aconteceu a digressão do Sporting foi extremamente con-
turbado e carregado de dramaticidade. Quando o Sporting chegou a Moçambique, ao fim de 
junho de 1954, os enclaves portugueses na Índia de Dadrá e Nagar-Aveli passaram a sofrer 
ataques de grupos nacionalistas da União Indiana (Alexandre, 2017), processo que continuou 
durante todo o tempo em que o Sporting esteve na África.
Por conta de toda essa efervescência política, o Estado Novo investiu em transferências 
culturais de um lado e de outro (Peralta e Domingos, 2013). Era preciso criar zonas de con-
tato com experiências culturais de lado a lado, e as práticas esportivas fizeram parte desse 
processo. Além do aumento das digressões de clubes portugueses em direção às colônias 
africanas e também no sentido contrário,1 jornais de grande circulação em Portugal, Angola e 
Moçambique passaram a fazer inúmeros pedidos pela realização dos Jogos do Império e pela 
participação de clubes do ultramar na Taça de Portugal.2
Com base na perspectiva da história imperial, analiso a maneira como a digressão do 
Sporting foi relatada em setores-chave da imprensa popular imperial, “o meio pelo qual polí-
ticos e o público se enfrentavam via jornalistas, editores e proprietários, e onde as notícias se 
misturavam com entretenimento e muitas vezes se confundiam” (Lewis, 2017: 465).
A cobertura da imprensa da metrópole e das colônias serviu para que o Império por-
tuguês pudesse ser lido por um amplo público, agindo no sentido de ampliar a experiência 
imperial. As crônicas escritas por membros da delegação do clube português, como “Os Leões 
em África”, do goleiro Carlos Gomes, e, principalmente, a “Rota da Saudade”, de Mota, nos 
mostram uma exaltação ao portuguesismo, ao “gênio colonial português” e ao próprio Impé-
rio ultramarino.
A cobertura da imprensa imperial serviu também para mostrar as possibilidades de fissu-
ra que o futebol trazia para a reverberação de um discurso uníssono na rede imperial, revelan-
do quão ancorado numa divisão racial estava esse colonialismo (Araújo, 2013).
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Redes imperiais: futebol e imprensa na política colonial
A produção historiográfica sob a perspectiva da história imperial auxilia numa melhor compreensão de como se davam as dinâmicas interativas entre as diferentes partes dos 
impérios e nos ajudar a pensar tanto na influência imperial da metrópole nas colônias quanto 
no impacto dessa política imperial nas próprias metrópoles (Sinha, 1998). As atividades de 
trocas de experiências entre a metrópole e suas colônias podem ser vistas como elementos 
de circulação de uma rede imperial, que conecta pessoas, bens e capital por meio de seus 
pontos nodais (Magee e Thompson, 2010). No caso dos impérios