The World According to Football

Brazil.

Somehow the land of Christ the Redeemer

and the world's most popular butt lift.

You got a belly booty. Congratulations.

But to millions of fans,

it is also the spiritual home of football.

Superb solo goal!

Yeah, sure, football was invented in England,

but it's in Brazil where it became an art form.

I don't believe it!

Nowhere else is the beautiful game

embraced more as a national pastime.

Brazil are in the lead!

In fact, the highest goal scorer

in World Cup history is Brazilian.

But if I asked you who it is, what would be your guess?

Pelé?

No.

Maybe Ronaldo?

Wrong.

How about Neymar?

Not even close.

The Brazilian goal machine is Marta.

It's inevitably scored

by the world's greatest player.

Absolutely breathtaking Marta.

No one, man or woman,

has won FIFA World Player of the Year more times.

Marta has just been an inspiration of Brazil.

Yet until 2019,

Marta was like a direct-to-video sequel.

Now this title's a knockout.

She had never played

before a mainstream audience in her motherland,

and the 2019 World Cup

marked the first time most Brazilians watched her on TV.

Until then, Marta's compatriots

didn't know a Women's World Cup existed

or that Brazil even had a women's national team.

A whole nation blanking half its population?

Could it be that maybe, just maybe,

Brazilians don't love soccer that much?

Women's soccer has always been treated

like the redheaded stepchild.

Good night.

The first Men's World Cup took place in 1930.

But women had to wait until 1991 to get their own,

and their reward for finally hitting the World Cup jackpot?

Brazilian TV ignored the first seven tournaments.

As a result, the world's best soccer player...

Marta, 1-0 it is!

...was denied a national audience

in the world's most soccer mad country

until her fifth World Cup tournament.

It's a dereliction of duty that almost defies belief.

Kind of like American TV

refusing to broadcast a Tom Brady game

until his last Super Bowl.

And this media blackout directly impacted Marta's bank account.

Neymar's yearly salary from his club team, Al-Hilal,

reportedly $160 million a year.

In comparison, in Marta's first year

playing club football in America,

she earned the same salary

as the manager at your local Quiznos.

$41,000 a year before tax.

Every Brazilian parent dreams

their kid will grow up to be a soccer star.

But like many things in life,

this dream has a tragic gender bias.

And if you're a young woman

who wants to become a footballer in Brazil,

well, good luck.

Juju Gol!

It's not just in football,

where women are fighting for equality.

Brazil has one of the largest

gender wage gaps in Latin America,

with women on average earning 30% less than men.

Brazil also has one of the highest rates

of femicide in the world.

Bruno Fernandez,

one of Brazil's up and coming football stars,

accused by police of masterminding

the killing of his ex-girlfriend.

Is Brazil

an especially violent place for women?

Women have always been treated

as second class citizens.

You know, we have less political representation,

lower wages, less access to the labor market.

So, all these issues tend to make women

more vulnerable to violence against them.

As a mirror to society,

football reflects these systemic issues on the pitch,

Which means to thrive on the pitch,

Brazilian women have to survive off it first.

And that makes every female footballer in Brazil

a real-life superwoman.

Tamires is a player

that if you look at her story in football,

she had all the reasons to give up.

When she was starting her professional career,

she got pregnant, so she had to stop.

Then at that time, of course,

you didn't have any support from the clubs,

so she had to keep fighting for what she was dreaming of.

And it's very rare to find a woman

that is a football player in Brazil,

successful football player, and has a daughter or a son.

So, she is very different because of that.

If these woman are today superheroes,

you may be wondering what the previous generation

had to put up with.

Back in the 1930s,

women's soccer was a hot property in Brazil.

Rio alone had over 40 women's clubs.

Women's soccer saw hope on the horizon.

But all that promise turned out to be an awful mirage.

It's a tale as old as time.

A culture inches towards open mindedness and progress.

Opportunities emerge for marginalized people.

Then suddenly, a boiling point is reached.

Powerful men say "not so fast,"

and a furious backlash is unleashed.

"I am referring, Mr. President,

"to the movement that is stirring hundreds of ladies,

"attracting them to become football players,

"without noting that a woman cannot play such a violent sport

"without seriously affecting her organic functions

"and psychological balance

due to her nature, which is to be a mother."

In the Museum of Football,

they said they didn't find anything

about women's football history

in the sports pages of newspapers.

But in the police pages were like,

that woman went to prison because she was playing

or because, you know, she was part of the team.

A ban on women's football sounds surreal,

like something straight off a Taliban vision board.

But Brazil wasn't the exception, it was the rule.

The council feel impelled to express their strong opinion

that the game of football is quite unsuitable for females

and ought not to be encouraged.

There was a global movement to cockblock women

from the beautiful game.

England, Italy, Germany, Spain,

the Netherlands, France.

And this tidal wave of bands shared the same premise.

Women needed to be protected from themselves.

And who better to shoulder this burden than men?

The bans would last for decades,

and most weren't lifted until feminism

and the civil rights movement intervened.

The Brazilian ban remained in place until 1979,

and it created a lost generation of female players.

During the period that I was growing up,

it was very strong, this idea

that women could not be in that space.

So that's why my dad didn't take me to the stadium

when he went to the stadium for the first time with my brother.

That's why I didn't have the chance

to play football when I was a girl at school.

Football was not something for girls.

It's a man's thing or it's a boy's thing.

When you have a ban,

you cannot have organized football.

So, you cannot have an official league.

You cannot develop this sport.

And that's something important for what we see now.

Future soccer stars aren't just born,

they're forged in fire.

To make it in soccer,

you've got to start climbing the ladder the moment you're weaned.

But there has to be a ladder for you to climb in the first place.

In Brazil, there's no better ladder than escolinhas.

Escolinhas are special schools just for football,

but here's the catch.

Historically, escolinhas admit only boys.

It's like if Professor X had a strict no girls' policy.

Does that mean I'm expelled?

Oh, on the contrary, you're enrolled.

While women's soccer stagnated for decades,

Brazil built tons of escolinhas.

Wherever a group of boys gathered to kick a ball,

an escolinha popped up.

Escolinhas are affiliated with big football clubs

and stalked by top scouts.

Catch a scout's attention and voilà.

Money offers start flooding in.

If you're the right gender,

escolinhas will fast track your dream.

But if you're a girl, well, sucks to be you.

With few opportunities to play in Rio de Janeiro.

Juju and her parents were forced to uproot their family

and move to São Paulo.

Unless the flawed infrastructure got fixed,

Brazilian women stood no fighting chance.

Then, all of a sudden,