Underdog Stories / Football history

What was Corinthians Democracy? Sócrates and the 1980s story

What was Corinthians Democracy? Sócrates and his teammates voted on everything under Brazil's dictatorship. Here's how it worked and how it ended.

By Brett Hanson · Underdog Podcasts · July 24, 2026

Share on X

In the Corinthians dressing room in 1982, the club's biggest star had one vote. So did the man who cleaned the boots. Sócrates, captain of Brazil's 1982 World Cup team, carried the same weight as the employee who cleaned the players' boots.

That is the short answer to what Corinthians Democracy was. Democracia Corintiana was an experiment at Sport Club Corinthians Paulista, running from about 1982 to 1984. Players, coaches, doctors and staff voted on how the team was run while Brazil was still a military dictatorship. Sócrates, a qualified doctor and the team's star, was its best-known voice.

What was Corinthians Democracy in practice?

Chris Horwedel lays out the list on Why We Love This Club, in the episode "Sport Club Corinthians Paulista — The Team That Practiced Democracy Under a Dictatorship". They voted on training schedules. They voted on whether to stay in a hotel before matches. They argued over transfers and team rules.

The hotel vote matters more than it sounds. Brazilian clubs locked players in a pre-match camp, the concentração, like a boarding school with shin pads. The players won looser discipline and let married players out of the camp.

Some votes were stranger. When Casagrande asked to leave the team in Japan because he missed his girlfriend, the squad deliberated it collectively. Nobody has told me how that one went, and I'd pay to see the ballot.

Chris is straight about the limits. The arrangement "didn't eliminate hierarchy, conflict, or sporting pressure". Emerson, a player signed by majority vote, joked that the movement was a democracy where only three men gave the orders: Sócrates, Vladimir and Casagrande. That sounds right to me. A vote is still a vote when three loud people are lobbying for it.

Who was behind it: Sócrates, Casagrande, Vladimir and Adilson Monteiro Alves?

It started upstairs. Adilson Monteiro Alves was a sociologist who rejected the old authoritarian way of running a Brazilian club. Waldemar Pires, elected club president in 1982, made him football director, and a book on Casagrande described him as a young sociologist with revolutionary ideas about sport management.

He found partners in the dressing room. Chris names fullback Vladimir, a respected veteran and the club's appearance record holder, and young striker Walter Casagrande, outspoken and charismatic. He adds Zenon in midfield. At the centre was Sócrates, tall, technically brilliant, a medical degree earned alongside an elite career. Hence "Dr. Sócrates".

One academic paper describes the three leaders as three different strands. Sócrates came from the university tradition, Vladimir from the players' union tradition, and Casagrande from the counterculture. That is a tidy summary of a very untidy group. Sócrates smoked and gave interviews with a table full of beer bottles. Nobody confused this with a seminar.

Why did Corinthians wear "Democracy" on their shirts?

Because 1982 was an election year, and the shirts were a way to talk to the crowd. Brazil was holding its first governor elections since the 1964 coup. The club publicised the 15 November vote and urged people to back candidates committed to democracy. Chris says the team wore a message telling people to vote.

The regime noticed. The head of the national sports council threatened to intervene in the club, and Corinthians did not change course. Casagrande later recalled that the government phoned the club every week asking them to drop the name and the "day 15 vote" message.

Then the team won. Corinthians took the Paulista Championship in 1982 and defended it in 1983. After the second title, the players carried a banner: "Win or lose, but always with democracy." Chris is right to note the order of things. They won while making the argument, which made it much harder to dismiss them as amateurs playing at politics.

“Corinthians did not simply issue a statement supporting democracy. For a brief, remarkable period, they tried to practice it.”
— Chris Horwedel, on Why We Love This Club

What was Diretas Já, and what did Sócrates promise?

Diretas Já means "Direct Elections Now". It was a campaign built on a constitutional amendment to end the system in which an electoral college of lawmakers chose the president. Corinthians joined it. Their jerseys carried "Diretas Já" on the back.

On 16 April 1984, Sócrates, Casagrande, Vladimir and Adilson were on the stage at a rally in São Paulo's Anhangabaú Valley. An estimated 1.5 million people came, the largest political demonstration Brazil had seen. Sócrates was about to leave for Italy. Chris says he promised to stay if Congress passed the amendment. He told the crowd that if it passed, he would not leave his country.

It didn't pass. The vote on 25 April 1984 was 298 in favour and 65 against, but a constitutional change needed 320. It fell 22 short. Another 113 deputies didn't show up, mostly from the government's party. Sócrates went to Fiorentina.

The dictatorship ended the next year, but not neatly. In 1985 an electoral college chose Tancredo Neves as the first civilian president in 20 years. Direct presidential elections waited until 1989.

Why did a club founded under a street lamp try it?

The club began as a complaint about who got to play. In 1910 football in São Paulo belonged to the elite clubs. After watching the touring English amateurs of Corinthian FC, five laborers from Bom Retiro met on 1 September. They wanted a club open to ordinary people. The names Chris gives are Joaquim Ambrosio, Antônio Pereira, Rafael Perón, Anselmo Correia and Carlos Silva.

The lamp is part of the legend. ESPN says they met under a gas lamp. Another reference work says kerosene. I'd call it a lamp and leave the fuel to the historians. The first president, Miguel Battaglia, is quoted as saying the club would be "of the people, by the people and for the people". Chris has it as a team of the people, and the people would make the team. The wording varies by retelling, and nobody has a signed copy.

Early opponents sneered at the supporters as poor and rough. Corinthians took the sneer and wore it. Then came the long wait: almost 23 years without a major title until Basílio's goal against Ponte Preta on 30 October 1977. So by 1982 this was a club that already believed it belonged to the people in the stands. Asking the people in the dressing room to vote was not a huge stretch.

How did Corinthians Democracy end?

Slowly, then at the ballot box. The movement began to fade in 1984, when Sócrates went to Italy and Casagrande went to São Paulo. Corinthians loaned Casagrande to São Paulo FC.

The final blow was a club election. In 1985 Pires tried to make Adilson his successor, and Adilson lost. Casagrande later said the loss ended it, and claimed there were votes from people who had died. That is his account, and I haven't seen it independently confirmed.

Sources disagree on dates. One Corinthians history site says the movement lasted from 1982 to 1984. An academic paper dates it 1981 to 1985. It's a movement that didn't announce its start or finish.

Chris doesn't pretend it was perfect. He says Corinthians have often been badly run, and that the club's history is full of tension between popular identity, politics, money and debt. His point is that they asked why authority at work should go unquestioned, and won championships while asking.

There's one more detail. Almost 40 years after that lost election, Adilson's son Duílio became president of Corinthians. Some elections take a while to count.