Flamengo and Palmeiras domination turning Brazilian football into La Liga

Among the squad of 26 players selected for the 2022 men’s World Cup in Qatar, Brazil coach Tite picked just three who play their club football in Brazil: Pedro and Everton Ribeiro, from Rio de Janeiro club Flamengo, and Palmeiras’s Weverton — Brazil’s third-choice goalkeeper.

Their presence was telling: not only did it show how Brazil’s domestic league can no longer compete with the major footballing nations in Europe, but it also showed the local dominance of Palmeiras and Flamengo. 

This Saturday afternoon, Palmeiras and Flamengo will face off in the country’s Supercopa — pitting the league champions against the domestic cup winners in a one-off match to raise the curtain on the new Brazilian football season.

Of the last five Brazilian league championships, the two sides have won four combined. When it comes to the continental Copa Libertadores, South America’s most prestigious club tournament, Flamengo and Palmeiras have won all of the last four editions.

While such national dominance is the norm in Spain, Germany, and other traditional European footballing countries, the same cannot be said for Brazil. In any given football season, fans from any one of 12 clubs around the nation begin the year believing they will come away with a title. The recent domination of Flamengo and Palmeiras is starting to threaten this.

Between 2001 and 2020, Brazil has had eight different national champions and 15 clubs finishing in the league’s top three positions. In the English Premier League, long regarded as one of the least centralized in terms of top teams, there were six champions over the same span, while only eight different clubs finished in the top three.

The indebted adversaries of Palmeiras and Flamengo are facing increasingly worse financial conditions, sometimes even transforming themselves into private...