As estratégias de João Havelange para enfraquecer o futebol olímpico

Abstract

This article seeks to present João Havelange's strategies when he took office as Fifa president in 1974. One of his strategies was to weaken Olympic football by creating the Fifa World Youth Tournament in 1977, an action aiming to strengthen Fifa World Cup, and trying to breed in the young athletes the idea that the World Cup was the most important football competition. In 1992, in its last constraining act, Fifa imposed an age limit on Olympic football tournaments. Havelange's strategies triggered the conflict between IOC and Fifa over the control of football regulations. In this context, one can understand how the political actions divided those two competitions, giving rise to different discourses about those two tournaments.