If we gave the world the beautiful game then Brazil gave it
its flair and panache. The players that have come out of the largest country in
South America’s footballing talent pool is a who’s who of the best players the
game has ever seen, names like Garrincha, Pelé, Zico, Romario, and more
recently Kaka.
It took us 114 years to sign our first Brazilian player
Fabio Aurelio who arrived from Valencia in July 2006, he was shortly followed
by Lucas Leiva and back up goalkeepers Diego Cavalieri and Alexander Doni.
It wasn’t till the 1980’s that Brazilian players such as Zico started to leave for European
football, for years and years if there was a player based outside the country,
they weren’t picked for the national team, so players were reluctant to move
abroad because it would jeopardize their chances of representing their country.
By the time the World Cup started in 1990, more than half of
the Brazil squad were based at European clubs. This marked a change but not as
we know it today, in the 80’s when a player left he was usually in the twilight
of his career, now it’s the younger generation of talent such as Neymar that is
enticed by the European elite.
Not many fans know it but our connection with Brazilian
football goes back almost a 100 years when Scouser Harry Welfare transported
the English style of play to Brazil in 1913.
It was a flu virus in the Liverpool squad that gave Welfare
a chance at the first-team, he made his home debut 15th Feb 1913 in the 2-1 win
over Sheffield Wednesday, were he had a hand in both goals and struck the
woodwork twice. A fortnight before, he scored against Everton reserves in a
game watched by a crowd of more than 20,000. The Lancashire Courier described
him as a “fearless amateur, who not only plays with mature judgment, but is as
formidable as a stone wall then it comes to charging.” Charging the Goalkeeper
was part of the game back then and one of Harry’s specialties.
Welfare made three more appearances for the Reds scoring his
only goal in a 2-1 win at home to Derby County, defeats to Tottenham and
Manchester United followed. Liverpool wanted to sign Welfare on as a
professional but according to the Liverpool Echo he decided to board a ship to
South America in July 1913. He left Merseyside to become a teacher at the
Ginasio Anglo-Brasileiro, a boy’s boarding school. The school’s PE teacher, a
certain J.A. Quincey-Taylor also happened to be the first-team coach at
Fluminense Football Club.
When Harry arrived in Rio de Janeiro on 9th August 1913 his
membership to the Fluminense Sports Club was proposed and accepted, football in
Brazil at that time was amateur and would have to wait till some twenty years
before it would turn professional. Harry made his debut in Brazil for a Rio
select XI against Corinthians, the fabled touring side from England, which had
earlier influenced the christening of the club with the same name in Sao Paulo,
Welfare grabbed a goal in a 2-1 victory.
In 1914 while juggling his job as a schoolteacher he topped
the leagues scoring charts, because he was so deadly in front of goal question
were asked about his amateur status by the Liga Metropolitana. The Fluminense
board reiterated that Welfare had only played as an amateur in his homeland and
had to write to Liverpool’s secretary George Patterson to confirm his
standings. Patterson wrote back. “Mr. Harry Welfare always played for us as an
amateur. Prior to joining our club he played for several local teams but always
as an amateur and to our knowledge was never a professional. I can trust this
will put the matter right.”
By the time George Patterson’s response was received in
Brazil Welfare was in the middle of a scoring spree which saw him find the net
13 times in four games. By 1917 with Fluminense on the verge of their first
title in six years, teaching and playing was getting too much for Harry so the
club found him a job at a British steel importers closer to the clubs training
ground. In the remaining five games Welfare found the net 11 times – including
6 against Bangu, which remains a club record to this day. In total, he scored
48 in 40 games.
Welfare started show signs of this coaching abilities
advising Fluminense’s coaching staff on training methods. In Max Valentim’s O
Futebol e sua Tecnica, he says that Welfare taught Fluminense’s inside forwards
how to execute the through ball. For Valentim, Harry was “a master in the art
of scoring goals, an able exponent of the English school who had nevertheless
adapted to our style of play.”
During the next two seasons, Fluminense finished as
Champions. In 1919, they beat city rivals Flamengo 4-0 on the last day of the
season to secure the title with Welfare scoring one of the goals. After the
match he received his winner’s medal from the president of Brazil before a
fanfare and a 21 gun salute, fired from a cannon, which today is in the
Fluminense Museum.
In 1927, having played for Fluminense for over a decade and
scoring no less than 163 goals in 166 games making him the third leading scorer
of all time. At aged 37 Welfare decided to join city rivals Vasco da Gama,
traditionally the club of Rio’s working class and black community. Although he
only played handful of games for the club, soon with Vasco he would become a
coach of repute, winning the 1929 State Championship with four of his players
selected for the 1930 World Cup in Uruguay. Between June and August 1931 Harry Welfare
took Vasco on a tour of Europe - only the second trip to Europe by a Brazilian
club since the one of CA Paulistano in 1925. In twelve matches in Portugal and
Spain - against FC Barcelona, FC Porto, and Benfica and Sporting Lisbon – Vasco
won eight times.
Two of Harry’s players, goalkeeper Jaguaré and midfielder
Fausto announced that they would not travel back with the rest of the team,
instead accepting an offer from Barcelona, becoming the first black Brazilians
to be recruited abroad. It helped strengthen the case of those calling for the
game to be professionalized in Brazil. When discussions began in Rio a year
later Vasco’s president was unsurprisingly one of the first to participate.
By 1934, professional leagues were up and running and Welfare
became the first coach to win the league, having signed Leônidas da Silva from
Peñarol in Uruguay. Leônidas the Romario of his era and pioneer of the bicycle
kick. Two years later, Welfare coached Vasco to a third championship. His star
man was Feitiço, a striker with six Paulista league medals already and had been
a champion and leading scorer in Uruguay. The signing of Feitiço was proof that
Welfare could attract the best players to Vasco.
It wasn’t until the late 30’s that a member of his family in
the Royal Navy managed to track him down after docking in Rio, they had no idea
of his football exploits 7,000 miles away back home in Liverpool. By the late
40’s Harry was working for the Rio State Football Federation and he helped
ensure Brazil hosted the 1950 World Cup. For his services to Fluminense he was
elected a Member for Life of the club’s deliberative council. Harry Welfare
died 1st September 1966 aged 78 in Angra dos Reis, just outside Rio de Janeiro.
There is an article on the Fluminense website which
describes Welfare as the British Tricolour, and refers to him as “o gigante
ruivo-grisalho” – the giant red-grey – when recalling the striker’s goal record
and contribution to the clubs success.
Their debt to him is evident when the same article mentions that his
goals helped make the club a power in football, and that he is still thought of
so highly today shows the impact he had on the club.
Blog inspired by Simon Hughes.
Follow @Glady_Libs_LFC
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