What are Brazil football’s “state championships”?

Welcome back to the Brazil Sports newsletter! We hope you had an excellent holiday period and are ready to sink your teeth back into the Brazilian football season, which starts back up this week with state championships. The year 2020 promises to be a huge one for sport in Brazil, with the Tokyo Olympics starting in July, the Copa America (again) in June, and the country will celebrate the 50th anniversary of the famous 1970 World Cup win. Tune in every week, and you won’t miss a beat!

Brazilian football’s state affairs

After a little more than a month off, the Brazilian football season is back underway. The national championship only starts up again in May, but until then, the country’s 27 states compete in their own local competitions, the so-called State Championships—much to the confusion of foreign observers.

What are they? Simply put, the state championships involve all the football clubs from a particular state, split into divisions and usually following a league-play off structure. The competition itself provides no qualification to continental tournaments but serves as one of the entry routes to the Copa do Brasil: Brazil’s annual domestic cup competition. However, with 91 teams qualifying for the Copa do Brasil, the stakes aren’t particularly high for any major sides.

Uneven playing field. While every town in Brazil has at least one football club, the gap in quality within states can be astounding. In Rio de Janeiro, it is not uncommon to see national champions Flamengo playing away from home on an overgrown pitch, against a semi-professional opposition with less than 50 supporters, and without enough players registered to fill their substitutes bench.  

Why do they do it? The most commonly asked question from foreign football fans, wanting to understand Brazil’s state football. First and foremost, the state championships are based on tradition. Football in Brazil developed on a purely regional and state level, with the first “nationwide” tournament only being organized in 1959. A conventional national league was only brought in in 1971. And even then, the state championships were the major prize in Brazil all the way up until the 1990s.