Futebol do Amapá: implicações de um profissionalismo “marrom”

Abstract

This paper is entitled SOCCER IN AMAPÁ: implications of a “brown” professionalism. Which aims at understanding the devaluation of soccer in the State of Amapá, seeking answers on historical facts and comparing them to reality, as well as encouraging public policies regarding the importance of revitalizing this sport for the coming decades, starting with the problems that surround the reality of the professional soccer in the State of Amapá? For this paper, it was used as a methodological strategy a descriptive, qualitative and quantitative field research, drawing from that, the historical map of Soccer in Amapá, dividing it into three periods, from 1940, for selecting nine individuals to be interviewed. Thus, we used an interview guide with open semi-structured questions. This way, former players, sport journalists, coaches and soccer club managers were inquired. With the required data in the responses, it was prepared a mixed questionnaire which consists of 8 questions: seven closed and one open, driven to a hundred team supporters, both sexes, in Macapá and Santana: twenty-five women and seventy-five men. This research revealed that: poor governance, lack of infrastructure and planning, the devaluation of junior categories, de-motivation of the athletes and media influences are among the main factors that impact the development of soccer in Amapá. Origin, upward trajectory, transition, decline and reality are words that sum up this sport in Amapá throughout its history. However, when comparing past to presente, answers were found, which delivered strong bases for the purposes of this study. In short, the professional soccer demonstrated itself to be a 100% dependent on government funding, as this research testified local clubs do not value the law of supply and demand imposed by capitalism in which investments generate profits for financial independence.