Sócrates was born in Pará but grew up in Ribeirão Preto, a city in the north west
of São Paulo state, Brazil’s most developed economy. His father grew up poor but was self-taught
and insisted that all his sons study hard. Ever since he was a boy, Sócrates dreamt
of being a doctor and he would study by day and at night and on weekends train or play
for Botafogo, one of the two big clubs in Ribeirão.
When he graduated, he was faced with a choice of medicine or football and he chose the latter,
because, as his father insisted, he could practice medicine when he finished playing
football, but he couldn’t do it the other way around.
Brazil in the 1970s was run by brutal military dictators, but the young Sócrates was apolitical.
In addition to books and backheels, his main interests were drinking, smoking and chasing
girls. What little he did know was tainted by the
conservative culture of Ribeirão Preto and the regime’s rigid control. In one of his
first interviews in 1976 Sócrates supported the dictatorship and said censorship was important
if a government was to maintain control of its people.
They were words he would later disavow. Sócrates had always been aware of Brazil’s
brutal inequality. As a footballer he saw it up close in his teammates, many of whom
were poor, dark-skinned and uneducated. He encouraged them to read, often by simply leaving
a newspaper lying about the team hotel. “No one picked it up,” he recalled. “Ever.
I said to them: you need to learn, keep up with things, grow as people.”
Sócrates’ true political awakening came in São Paulo after joining Corinthians in
1978. Corinthians was the biggest club in the biggest city in Brazil and a star player
there was in demand. Sócrates met, and befriended, the country’s top journalists, celebrities,
politicians, musicians and intellectuals. It was at Corinthians that he first met Wladimir,
the Afro-Brazilian full back who was one of Brazil’s earliest and most visible proponents
of black power. He soon became friends with Juca Kfouri, a leftist sociologist who was
editor of Placar, the influential and big-selling sports magazine.
But his biggest influence was Adilson Monteiro Alves, who took over as Corinthians director
of football in 1981. A staunch socialist who used to manage a biscuit factory, Adilson
quickly became Sócrates’ political mentor. They became firm friends and drinking partners
and together they were the driving force behind what became known as Democracia Corinthiana.
Along with Wladimir, veteran defender Zé Maria, and then striker Walter Casagrande,
they formed what was the most radical player-power movement that football has ever seen.
Everyone at the club got a vote and the president had as much power as the tea lady over club
issues. On the playing side, the squad voted on everything that affected the team: how
long to train, if their priority was to sign a new left winger or a new centre forward;
whether to stop the team coach so everyone could run to the toilet.
The movement was controversial – Brazil’s vested interests hated seeing a bunch of rag-tag
footballers challenging their authority. But it was also a success. It brought, by
example, the message of free speech and democracy – of one person, one vote – to millions
of Brazilians who had known only repression. People who would never listen to the president
listened to Sócrates. “We were poking the bear with a short stick,”
he said. “And it was beautiful, because we took it beyond our own horizons to the
horizons of the nation and that is what we wanted to do.”
The man they affectionately called ‘the doctor’ revelled in the spotlight. When
he was asked about the World Cup or the Paulista state championship, he would answer politely
and then change the subject to talk about the need for better schools or greater investment
in hospitals. Not all his Corinthians teammates supported
the idea but most went along with it and, coincidentally perhaps, it coincided with
a great spell for the club. Corinthians did not win a trophy between 1954 and 1977, when
they laid their hoodoo by winning the Paulista state championship. Sócrates arrived in 1978
and they won the title again a year later. Under Democracia Corinthiana they won the
Paulista two years running in ‘82 and ‘83, the first time they had won back-to-back titles
in more than 30 years. As they walked on to the field for the second
leg of the final in December 1983, the Corinthians players carried a banner that declared, “Win
or Lose, But Always with Democracy.” It was one of the most iconic moments in Brazilian
footballing history. Off the field, his involvement in politics
and social campaigns energised Sócrates more than football. The dictators had been in power
for almost 20 year and with the economy tanking they knew their days were numbered. Sócrates’
outspoken opposition helped hasten their demise. Key to that was Sócrates’ support for the
Diretas Já movement that in early 1984 fought for the return of democratic elections for
president. Huge demonstrations took place all over Brazil. In São Paulo, more than
a million people turned out to hear Sócrates, backed up by several of his Corinthians teammates,
appeal for a return to free and fair ballots. At precisely this same time, Sócrates was
in demand with Europe’s top clubs. His starring performances as Brazil captain in the 1982
World Cup prompted big money offers from across the Atlantic. The best players in the world
were moving to Spain and particularly Italy, and Sócrates was keen on testing himself.
But he was so committed to the democratic cause – and so in thrall to the idea that
the nation he loved must develop its own kind of tropical socialism – that he promised
the huge crowd if the military-backed Congress voted to allow free and fair elections he
would reject the lure of the lira and stay in Brazil to help with the transition to democracy.
The measure was rejected and, soon after, Sócrates signed for Fiorentina.