No interest in big teams, journalist documents ‘lost games’ for 18 years

Thousands of Palmeiras fans took a stretch of Avenida Marquês de São Vicente, west of São Paulo, in the early afternoon of the last day 2. They wanted to say goodbye to the squad that would leave the Football Academy for Guarulhos Airport. From there, they would travel to the United Arab Emirates to compete in the Club World Cup.

Oblivious to all this, Fernando de Matos Martinez, 45, passed through the turnstile of the Nicolau Alayon stadium, on the other side of the avenue. Minutes later, Nacional, the home team, would play against Comercial for the A3 Series of the Paulista Championship. FPF (São Paulo Football Federation) inspectors know him and call him by name.

“It’s the responsibility of perpetuating history. I feel I have the commitment to record the memory for the future because what happens today, tomorrow will be on the internet. But then it will be forgotten”, he asks.

The idea of ​​the Jogo Perdidos blog was born 18 years ago as a collective. A group of eight friends who liked to go to stadiums to see matches that most didn’t pay much attention to. Over time, the band dispersed.

Some have decreased attendance, others have lost interest altogether. Fernando was left, responsible for feeding the website with texts and maintaining the accounts on social networks.

“For photos, officially, there are four. When there’s a trip, we share accommodation. To really write, it’s just me. But I don’t care. People like it, accompany, ask to go to their city”, he says.

He has everything accounted for and noted for the period. Saw 740 different teams. It’s been 2,600 games since the blog’s inception. If you add the previous ones, there are already about 3,300. The photo archive has 180 thousand images. He believes that 75% of them only Lost Games have. Not even the clubs involved have them. That’s why he claims to help keep the memory of football.

On the afternoon of Nacional x Comercial, on Rua Comendador Sousa, Fernando is one of the two photographers at the edge of the field. The other was the press office of the club from Ribeirão Preto, which won 3-0. The text and photos may take a few days to enter the blog. He publishes the cards too, which can be a Herculean job.

As the matches are almost always not followed by the traditional media, Fernando takes the data placed by the arbitration in the summary of the Paulista Federation. But it contains the baptismal and full names of the players. And the nicknames? What if they only use the first name? Or just the last name? He has to go to the teams website or try to talk to someone to help him decipher that data.

“It could be something very complicated,” he confirms.

It helps not to have the urge to write minutes after the game ends. He writes not for immediate consumption, but for posterity.

“As time went by, the work got harder because at first, it was just a picture of the game with two or three lines of text. Now I write about how it went, the goals, post the images, publish the sheet. But no it’s a complaint. There was a crowd that participated and stopped watching. I can’t. I need it here”, he says, pointing to the almost empty stands of the Nacional stadium.

Fernando is a Corinthians native. The first time he entered a stadium was to see Corinthians and América, for Paulista in 1983. He was seven years old. When he was born, his father took him to Parque São Jorge to be “baptized” in the club’s biquinha. It should be a form of alliance with the team.

On that day of Nacional and Comercial, his first football love would play a classic against Santos at Neo Química Arena. Fernando didn’t even remember that.

“I don’t think I’ll even see it. I’m not interested in watching Corinthians and Santos.”

He went to the Itaquera arena, yes, but last Saturday (5th), to record the derby of the white-and-white team against Palmeiras, for the women’s Supercup. Then he ran to catch the subway and train and go to Barueri to watch, photograph and write about Barueri and Primavera de Indaiatuba, for Série A2 do Estado.

The lost games took Fernando out of a bad phase. He was studying Journalism in Bauru when his father died. He had to drop everything and return to São Paulo. He became depressed, and for the next six months he left the house little. Until he decided to go to a game with his friends who would be the initial nucleus of the collective.

“I didn’t stop anymore. It became therapy for me. That’s still it today. I need to be here, travel to Votuporanga, Tanabi, Jaú… That’s because the last division hasn’t even started. This is the most fun”, he analyzes, referring to the Second Division (actually the fourth), the lowest floor of the Paulista.

A reporter for a newspaper in Osasco, in Greater São Paulo, Fernando became a reference in research on games outside the big game circuit. He helped to gather data for the book “125 years of history – The encyclopedia of São Paulo football”, released by the Federation. He is also working on another work that will bring all the results of the Copa São Paulo history (another entertainment for Jogos Perdidos).

In the past, when there were eight members, they had a picture on Rede TV. Then they maintained a YouTube program for four years. Now it’s up to Fernando to keep the flame lit. Even though he has already been threatened with death, as happened once in Mogi das Cruzes. Or when he saw a player break his leg on the field and the ambulance, a Caravan falling apart, he couldn’t move.

“When the project was born, it was something for internal consumption, something for friends. It grew because we discovered that a lot of people like it. I’ve already received résumés from people who wanted to work with me. Football is here. This is real football. no question of playing a big game. I make a point of watching Nacional and Comercial”, he concludes, before packing his backpack and leaving for the next lost game.