Dating that took Textor to Botafogo started on ‘Tinder of business’

The path that took John Textor, 56, to Botafogo began to be followed on Linkedin. It was in a message on the social network, on July 12, 2021, that Thairo Arruda and Danilo Caixeiro made their first contact with the American billionaire, who agreed to buy 90% of the football shares of the Rio de Janeiro club.

“It’s like when someone asks where you met your girlfriend and you answer: on Tinder. With John, that was it. We sent him a message on Linkedin, and a conversation started from there”, says Arruda, comparing the business network to a dating app.

The fact that Brazilian businessmen have degrees from the prestigious Yale University in the United States facilitated the meeting. There was then an initial 30-minute conversation about opportunities in Brazil. Months later, Botafogo’s football was in Textor’s hands.

After the first meetings, Arruda and Caixeiro started to work for the American and prospect possible Brazilian clubs in which he could invest. They also acted as consultants in the debate on the SAF (Soccer Anonymous Society) law, which established parameters for the club-company model and allowed the purchase of the alvinegra club with a promised contribution of R$ 400 million.

The agreement represented an important step for Matix Capital, a company that the two Brazilians have in partnership with the Portuguese Fernando Capelo. They, who until then had not received anything for consulting Textor, were invited to join Eagle Holding, the billionaire’s company for business in football.

The duo is also on the Botafogo Transition Committee, as representatives of Textor. Also composed of representatives of the club, the group’s mission is to overcome obstacles and implement the change from black and white football from the associative model to the club-company format.

Caixeiro, now 31, and Arruda, who is 36, met while doing an MBA, completed at Yale in 2019, and got close precisely because of their desire to do business in football. They spent two years in Europe —one of them in Portugal, where they participated in the purchase of the Académica de Coimbra club— and cultivated relationships with potential investors.

But for them, the money is only coming in now. The idea they always had was that they would only receive with a closed deal. So, they were burning their reserves and say they were close to the limit when they settled with Textor, who also owns Crystal Palace, in England.

“With that euro at R$6, I ate a lot of noodles. I took out a loan from my mother… But there came a time when it started to tighten. We turned around and said: ‘Gee, what do we do to monetize? our work?’. Because in the long term it was unsustainable”, recalls Caixeiro.

Thairo sold an apartment and returned to live with his parents, receiving an allowance from them and his sister.

“In Europe, we used a rental car that was as cheap as possible. But we parked it two blocks away from where we had meetings. No one could see us with it. How were we going to do business if the investors interested in buying the club saw us with a car that looked like Mr. Bean’s?”, he laughs.

The bet paid off. In Brazil, Matix Capital already has relatively advanced conversations with other clubs. The two gained space in the market precisely because of their proximity to potential investors from abroad, combined with their knowledge of the reality of Brazilian football.

Unlike consolidated companies, such as XP Investimentos and Ernst & Young, which help clubs in the sales process, Matix proposes to be the consultant for those who buy. In this way, it operates in parallel with other companies.

The two keep their speech about how they work, what are the plans for the future and the analysis of the Brazilian market very well aligned. They have differences, however, in the way they behave on social networks.

Thairo Arruda was born in Borborema, in the interior of São Paulo, a city of 16,000 inhabitants — today he already has 1/8 of that amount in followers. On his social media, he comments on political issues and says he does not intend to stop doing so even with public scrutiny.

Danilo Caixeiro, who is from Rio, has a more discreet behavior. His Instagram account is restricted to those he authorizes as followers, and he has no posts on Twitter.

The speech of the two aligns again when asked about how to deal with the possibility that the honeymoon with Botafogo fans ends up turning into a nightmare if the team does not have good sporting results.

“The club was breathing on devices, in the ICU. The first thing is to save the club so it can have another hundred years of history. From now on, we have to align the fan’s expectations. Fight to be the biggest club in Brazil “We can’t deliver that within a year, right? There’s a certain amount of time. In a few years, the club will really be one of the biggest winners in Brazil again”, says Arruda.