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🧩 Power, politics and the pitch

🧩 Power, politics and the pitch

A recent magazine article detailed numerous scandals involving CBF president Ednaldo Rodrigues, and the confederation is working to deflect the wave of criticism coming its way

Euan Marshall
April 12, 2025 • Reading Time: 10 minutes

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Behind the scenes at the top table of Brazilian football

CBF boss Ednaldo Rodrigues talking to Neymar, Brazil’s biggest football star, ahead of a match against Bolivia in 2023. Photo: Vitor Silva/CBF

The ironic juxtaposition of Brazil’s historic 4-1 World Cup qualifier loss to Argentina just 24 hours after the unanimous re-election of Ednaldo Rodrigues as head of the CBF, Brazil’s football governing body, was not lost on the country’s football fans.

With the men’s national team facing a football crisis on the pitch and a popularity crisis off the pitch (along with constant complaints from players, coaches and pundits about certain organizational aspects of Brazil’s top leagues), seeing Rodrigues win another four-year term in charge of Brazilian football — with the votes of all 27 state federations and the 40 clubs from the country’s top two leagues, felt like a slap in the face to fans invested in the national sport of the self-described Land of Football.

That ire was compounded even further this week, when reporter Allan de Abreu of Brazilian monthly magazine Piauí published his latest article on the inner workings of the CBF under its recently re-elected chairman.

Over six pages, Abreu rhymes off a litany of scandalous goings-on within the governing body of Brazilian football, including shady dealings, lavish spending, inflated contracts, concentration of power, conflicts of interest, sexual harassment and labor disputes — among other outrageous behaviors.

Ednaldo Rodrigues, the CBF’s 71-year-old president, is at the center of most of (if not all) the article’s reporting. The head of Bahia’s state football federation since 2001, Rodrigues rose to the top job in Brazilian football in 2021 after his predecessor, Rogério Caboclo, was suspended over sexual harassment allegations.

Initially in a caretaker role, he was elected in 2022 but temporarily impeached at the end of 2023, after a Rio de Janeiro court found irregularities in the electoral process.

Less than a month later, Supreme Court Justice Gilmar Mendes issued an injunction putting Rodrigues back in charge. The longest-serving judge on Brazil’s highest court, Mendes is mentioned several times in Abreu’s Piauí article, with the reporter noting the judge’s “direct relationship” with the CBF.

Justice Mendes is the founder of the IDP higher education facility in Brasília, which also oversees the CBF’s training courses for coaches and sporting directors. Despite the potential conflict of interest, Mendes did not recuse himself from taking the case of Rodrigues’s election.

Precious little oversight

The crux of what the CBF is today lies in the fact that it is, technically, a nonprofit private organization that does not receive public funding. As such, it is not beholden to shareholders, accounts courts, or other oversight bodies — a problematic arrangement given its near-absolute control over the billion-dollar business that is Brazil’s national sport.

In generations past, the CBF received a great deal of revenue from public lotteries, but that changed when Ricardo Teixeira took over as president in 1989. The son-in-law of then-FIFA president João Havelange, Teixeira helped turn the CBF into its current form — a profitable yet profligate organization where the money faucet never runs dry for the friends and allies of those in control.

Teixeira brought in meaty revenues from sponsorship deals and sports marketing, which crucially allowed the CBF to stop taking money from the government, removing any sort of heat from public agencies. After he left the CBF in 2012, Teixeira and his two successors became involved in a major FBI investigation into corruption in world football and were banned from the sport for life.

Top brass snubs Ronaldo, but he was fighting a losing battle

At the beginning of this year, former World Cup-winning footballer Ronaldo presented himself as the solution to the evils plaguing the CBF, and announced his intention to stand for election as the confederation’s president — a plan that, despite Ronaldo’s popularity, seemed like a car crash waiting to happen.

The legendary former striker sought to rub shoulders with influential figures within Brazilian politics and football to get his candidacy off the ground, but he was eventually forced to withdraw, complaining that none of Brazil’s 27 state football federations would even give him the time of day.

In 2017, the CBF underwent an electoral “reform” which merely concentrated more and more power in the hands of the country’s state federations — organizations which, in many cases, operate as mini-fiefdoms of their presidents.

When electing a CBF president, each of these 27 federations has a vote, as do the 20 clubs from the top division of Brazilian football and the 20 from the second division. However, each federation’s vote is worth three, while those of the top 20 clubs are worth two. As such, candidates can reach a majority by simply courting 24 of the 27 states, without even bothering to win over the clubs.

And Ednaldo Rodrigues — as did almost all his predecessors at the head of the CBF — has been careful to cater to as many state presidents as possible. Indeed, when he first took the president’s chair in 2021, he increased state federation presidents’ salaries by more than 300% — an effective way of currying favor, if there ever was one.

Ronaldo, realizing that no state federation would sit down to listen to his proposals, knew that he was fighting a losing battle.

In practice, CBF votes are typically unanimous, or close to it. While the heads of some of Brazil’s biggest clubs are certainly not fans of the national governing body and those in charge, they tend to lend their symbolic support in elections — knowing that they are in the minority, and speaking up could attract unwanted attention.

Even Botafogo’s American maverick owner, John Textor, who called on Rodrigues to resign live on television in 2023, voted for the incumbent president.

CBF unhappy with criticism?

With the national team’s matches attracting ever-decreating TV ratings and becoming the butt of jokes outside and inside Brazil, and the spendthrift habits of the sport’s governors being laid bare in the press, a more optimistic observer might see the current moment as an opportunity for profound change in Brazilian football.

Earlier this week, six journalists at broadcaster ESPN were suspended for two days after criticizing the CBF in a Monday roundtable discussion show. Ednaldo Rodrigues was reportedly upset with the content of the program and complained to ESPN, demanding measures be taken. The CBF denied this, saying it respects press freedoms and “does not interfere in any way with the editorial policies of media outlets.”

The national journalists’ union Fenaj called the suspension “unacceptable” and a “flagrant violation of journalistic freedom.”