The greatest player in the country's past and the greatest player in Brazil's present both hail from humble families where becoming a footballer or winning the lottery offer the most realistic hopes of a better future.

In a country where the minimum wage is less than $100 a month, football offers both a way out of poverty for young players and an escape valve from the daily grind of poverty, violence and injustice for everyone else.

The public who go to big games in Brazil produce an unforgettable spectacle with their drums, chanting and huge banners, an atmosphere matched only in neighbouring Argentina.

Yet if Brazilian club directors get their way, the samba drums and fireworks could soon be making way for executive boxes and prawn sandwiches.

Faced with rising costs, the country's first division clubs want to follow the example of England's premier league and make going to a football match a strictly middle class activity.

And that is not always a good thing. The atmosphere in English grounds has changed totally since the days of not so long ago when most fans stood and shouted.

As Manchester United skipper Roy Keane famously remarked a few years back, too many fans go to Old Trafford to watch United play sitting in a comfortable seat, quietly contemplating their seafood snacks.

Instead of turning the arena into a seething cauldron with their passion, supporters will be expected to splash out on replica shirts, bistro meals and souvenir nail clippers.

Last Monday, the clubs agreed to set minimum prices for next year's Brazilian championship Serie A matches and ruled that those who dare to offer discounts will be fined.

Brazilians will next season pay a minimum of Real 7.50 ($2.56) up from approximately Real 3.0 to watch matches from the so-called "Geral", a standing area with a poor view of the match where fans are liable to be pelted with objects and showered with unidentified liquids thrown from the upper tiers.

ASTONISHINGLY BLUNT

Minimum prices for the next cheapest area, the "Arquibancada" consisting of unnumbered seats on concrete blocks, will be Real 15 ($5.13) up from between Real 5 and 10.

Some directors were astonishingly blunt about the price hikes.

"Poor people cannot afford to take the bus, pay for food or clothes, they live in misery," said Mario Cesar Petraglia, president of Atletico Paranaense. "We have to work with people who can afford to go to the stadiums."

Mauro Hosmann, marketing director of the Club of 13 grouping which represents the country's biggest clubs, had been equally direct at a seminar two weeks earlier.

"The supporters need to contribute to the clubs' income," he said recently. "So they need to have spending power. The days when they just stand behind the fences chanting "we want players" are over."

The movement is a response to the Supporters Statute which was implented this year and forces clubs to improve conditions for Brazilian supporters, who have traditionally been treated with little regard.

But the ideas have already run into opposition.

"Brazilian football would completely lose its meaning without the presence of the masses," said Sports Minister Agnelo Queiroz.

"A lot of this sport's success is owed to children from poor families. After all, the best player of all time and the best player last year emerged from poverty," he said, referring to Pele and Ronaldo respectively.

Brazil's 1970 World Cup striker Tostao, who is now one of the country's most respected newspaper columnists, also voiced his disapproval.

"Football in the stadiums is the only leisure activity which the poor can afford and they want to stop it," he wrote.

"But that's not the solution. What they have to do is improve the stadiums and charge varying prices.

"Every citizen, whether poor or not, has the right to go to the ground in comfortable buses, to be safe, to be able to sit in numbered places, to use clean toilets and eat at decent snack bars."