A Map of Campeonato Brasileiro 2009
We’re delighted to present another outstanding map from Bill Turianski of Bill’s Sports Maps fame. Unlike most footballing powers, Brazil has a relatively recent and weak national competition, the Campeonato Brasileiro, only in existence since 1971. The Campeonato consists of twenty teams and play runs from May 3 to December 6 this year.
Eclipsing the Campeonato, the traditional focus in Brazil has been on the multiple regional state tournaments that have dominated the landscape and take up the rest of the year. However, power and attention has shifted towards the national tournament in recent years, with it now taking up a larger portion of the calendar year than ever before (an interesting article in this month’s World Soccer by Tim Vickery argues that it’s time to lay the state tournaments to rest entirely).
According to Alex Bellos’ excellent story of Brazilian football, Futebol, Brazil has 531 professional teams divided into 27 professional state leagues. Bill’s map handily outlines the handful of different states currently represented in the Campeonato.
What’s noticeable is the dominance of Sao Paulo (six clubs) — incidentally, no team outside the Sao Paolo state tournament has won the national championship since 2003. Overall, Sao Paulo clubs have won 17 national titles, with Rio closest with 10.
Click on the map to see all the details on Brazil’s Campeonato for 2009.
Click on the map for a full-size version
About the Author
Tom Dunmore is the founder and editor of Pitch Invasion. Follow him @pitchinvasion on Twitter.
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Very, very cool! I checked out Bill’s site. Interesting concept, although I couldn’t find anything on Ecuador. The NCAA map was nice, though.
many mistakes in this post. or at least poor arguments.
Brazilian league weak? 17 different champions since 1971. no other league in the world that produces one champion per year (in argentina, mexico, colombia there are two) has seen such variety. it is not easy to win this tournament. Also, every great Brazilian talent, from Pele to Kaka, played this league – very often sharing the stage with other great names.
Finally,the state leagues never ‘eclipsed’ the national league. They were more prestigious in the past, indeed, but never took the lights from the national tournament. And altough they should be shorter tournaments, the state leagues are important to keep the pool of talents alive. Brazilian football is great also due the great number of clubs it has, which is equal to more players working.
Bruno, the key word in the post is “relatively” to other “major footballing powers”. Compare the prestige and strength of Brazil’s national league to Spain, Germany, Italy etc, who don’t have major state tournaments taking up much of the year.
That doesn’t mean the Brazilian league is weak or that it’s easy to win the tournament.
prestige yes, but compared to the main european leagues, the brazilian lost only for the premiere league. the spanish league has only two teams every year. the italian has 3 (this season not even that). the german, french, portuguese all have very crappy sides.