Atlético Paranaense from Curitiba, one of Brazil’s top flight teams and Brazilian champions in 2001, banned press conferences and independent media work during their weekly activities and on match days.

On top of that, no staff member — including players and managers — of Atlético is officially allowed to speak to the media. The club says that radio stations and newspapers should pay for the right to report on the club, along the lines of fees television stations pay to broadcast matches.

However, a 2011 federal law forbids football clubs from charging money for radio broadcasts.

The club’s policy is that all information about the team will be funneled through official channels ike the team’s website, online radio and TV. Independent journalists will be limited to background information and off-the-record statements.

It’s a common practice in Brazil’s football industry to have at least two press conferences a week with players and managers and regular media activity on match days. It’s also usual in the country to have people from clubs on sport shows airing on TV and radio, which makes Atlético’s move a rare one in Brazilian football.

“The content we offer is not of a primary importance to the audience, it’s pure entertainment. So we don’t feel obliged to let anyone enter the club’s premises and profit from our business without paying for it, like radio stations do”, says Mauro Holzmann, Atlético’s director of communications and marketing.

“Less than thirty years ago it was OK for televisions to broadcast football matches without paying for it, but now it’s unthinkable to do so. So why don’t the other media pay for it? We know it’s a paradigm shift, but maybe other clubs will do this too”, Holzmann told Index on Censorship.

Broadcasting of matches became another problematic issue. Atlético did not reach an agreement for Paraná’s State Championship with TV rights holders RPC  – a local affiliate of national media giant Rede Globo. Because of that, fans were not be able to watch the games unless they bought tickets and went to the pitch.

“This is a complete enclosure that ends up damaging everybody”, says Leonardo Bonasolli, reporter at Gazeta do Povo, Curitiba’s biggest newspaper.

“The club loses exposure at the media, and exposure means more sponsorship money. The press loses the chance of providing a different, independent point of view and, of course, fans also lose because they are not interested only on the team’s monolithic media work”, Bonasolli told Index on Censorship.

Atlético’s chairman Mário Celso Petraglia said the State Championship – which runs from January until early May – is not profitable, so he would not only deny TV broadcasting but would also put the Under-23 team on the pitch, while the main squad would have an extended pre-season in Europe until the start of the Brazilian Championship.

About the media ban, Petraglia said in a rare interview that the club “reached a limit” in its relationship with the press, and that journalists “should be neutral and conduct [their work] in an ethical and moral way”, something he believes does not happen in Paraná.

Petraglia’s disturbed relationship with the press has a long history – it started in the late 1990s, when he was involved in a bribery scheme with referees to fix match results. He was neither convicted nor banned because of the episode.

Atlético first tried to charge money from radios to broadcast its games in 2008. However, a judge ruled the fees were illegal and radio stations have since been given stadium access on match days.

Atlético’s media ban was effectively shut down in early May, during the State Championship finals against historic rivals Coritiba. Rede Globo, which also owns the TV rights of the Brazilian Championship, made a deal with Atlético to allow both matches to be aired. It also closed an agreement for broadcasting the State Championship in 2014 and 2015.

After the game, Atlético’s players gave interviews normally, even to outlets other than Globo, as if there was no ban.

Paraná’s Sports Journalists Association believes Atlético’s attitude towards general media won’t change much, even with the upcoming Brazilian Championship, which draws national attention to all clubs.

“When the Brazilian championship starts, Atlético will be forced to speak to Globo, and they will also feel pressed to hold conferences after matches, because there will be so many journalists from the whole country. But I doubt they will allow other radio or TV stations inside the club during the week, so Globo will do all interviews and share their material to the other outlets”, says the Association’s president, Isaías Bessa.

Local journalists also say the club’s lack of transparency damages Curitiba’s position as one of the host cities of the 2014 World Cup – Atlético’s stadium will a venue. Renovations on the stadium are said to be the most behind schedule of any of the 12 World Cup venues, but independent media was never allowed inside after the works began.

Atlético’s Mauro Holzmann firmly says the stadium will be ready by the end of 2013, like FIFA demands, and blames all delays on “Brazil’s bureaucracy” to deal with public financing.

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Radio presenter Valério Luiz de Oliveira was gunned down at the front door of 820 AM radio station in the state capital Goiânia on 5 July 2012.

Businessman Maurício Borges Sampaio, who acted as Atlético Clube Goianiense’s vice-president up to 10 days before Oliveira’s murder, was arrested in February this year accused of having ordered the killing. He denies having any link to the crime.

Days before being killed, Oliveira went on air to strongly denounce Atlético’s management for the team, after poor results on the pitch led to the club’s relegation to the second tier of the Brazilian league later that year .

Among other statements, the presenter compared Atlético’s directors to “rats” that abandon a ship before it sinks .

In a testimony given to the Police, Sampaio admitted signing a document that barred Oliveira’s radio staff from the club’s premises. The former director also claimed the radio presenter had already being banned from Goiás and Vila Nova, two other football clubs in Goiânia.

Three other people accused of acting in the journalist’s killing are also being held in prison.

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The vexed question of Tottenham’s Yids should surely be seen in two distinct aspects. I first heard of the expression some years ago when told that Peter Osgood, then a Chelsea team hero, had been reported drunk in the King Road after Chelsea had defeated Spurs, kicking glass and exalting “We beat those yids.” That non-Jewish Spurs supporters have taken the insult and turned it, sometimes complete with Israeli flags, — as with “Yiddo!” — into a kind of ironic war chant, has always seemed to me amusing rather than oppressive. Though I remember an aggressive, middle-aged fan approaching me on Liverpool Street station after a Spurs game and demanding that I deplore the practice in my newspaper: “I don’t want to be called a fucking yid!”

The sad truth is that football’s more basic fans are racists by nature and sometimes, collectively, all but de-humanised. For many years after the appalling Munich airport crash of February 1958, which wiped out half of the Manchester United team and many others, you heard heartless choruses: “Who’s that lying on the runway, who’s that dying in the snow?” All too recently, four Millwall fans were ejected after flaunting banners, on the occasion of Leeds United’s visit, commemorating the brutal murder in Istanbul of two Leeds United supporters. The perversion of the Tottenham song, “Spurs are on their way to Wembley” into “Spurs are on their way to Auschwitz” and the repugnant hissing choruses suggesting poison gas belong in the same warped category.

Yet on the positive side, there has been in recent years a radical change in the treatment of black players. A black winger called Canoville, when he played for Chelsea in the early 80s, was subject to vicious abuse from a bunch of neo-fascist fans, while, in the professional game itself, there was absurd prejudice towards black players. Yet when West Indian footballers made their impressive mark on the game, followed by a host of outstanding black players from abroad, sheer weight of talented numbers put an end to black baiting. It took longer in Scotland, however and not so many years ago, at Celtic Park, that fine centre-back, Paul Elliott, playing for the home team, was so monstrously abused by Hearts fans that Robertson, Hearts captain, gallantly went over to them and begged them to stop. Racism in football, alas, is simply endemic in Eastern Europe and even in Spain where, not long since, black English footballers were vilely abused by Spain’s fans during an international.

FIFA, that sink of iniquity, spent years promulgating a campaign to “Kick Out Racism“ yet when push came to shove it was made known that racism wouldn’t be a criterion when the venue for the 2018 World Cup was chosen. So Russia, where anti-black racism in football is a disgraceful constant, was duly awarded the tournament. This though racist incidents proliferate.

This season, Odemwingie, the highly effective Nigerian international forward, was driven out of the Lokomotiv Moscow club by fans who, when he joined West Bromwich Albion — with outstanding success — displayed a banner “thanking” West Bromwich and displaying a banana. More recently, Roberto Carlos, the outstanding Brazil left back, now playing for a provincial Russian club, has bitterly complained about the torrents of abuse from fans. And when the celebrated Dutch coach, Dick Advocaat, was managing Zenith St. Petersburg, he admitted that he dared not sign a black player.

One of my salient memories of the 2006 World Cup in Germany was seeing before a match involving Ukraine, a ceremony in which all the players dedicated themselves to anti-racism. But standing unabashed beside the line of Ukrainians was their manager, Oleg Blokhin, previously a star attacker, who had recently and publicly railed against the presence of black players in Ukrainian soccer.

Matthew Norman recently wrote an article about the Tottenham Yids debate with the jocular assertion that “the second shortest book ever published is The Global Compendium of Jewish Sports Stars”. Meaning now, or historically? If the latter, he is way off beam. Think of Ted Kid Lewis and Jack Kid Berg or the many other great Jewish boxers of the last century. Or Sandy Koufax — the leading baseball pitcher of his generation. Or swimming great Mark Spitz.

As for the issue of Tottenham Yids, it seems to me somewhat marginal.

Brian Glanville is a football writer and novelist. He is a columnist for the Sunday Times and World Soccer. His novel The Rise of Gerry Logan, recently republished by Faber, was described by Franz Beckenbauer as “the best football book ever written”.

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