Cases of football players who served under dictatorships are known.
To be in just two involving famous players and still in the letter A, we have Andrada (1939-2019), Argentine goalkeeper who shone at Vasco and suffered the thousandth goal of Pelé, and Augusto (1920-2004), defender also of Vasco, captain of the Brazilian team in the 1950 World Cup.
The first died stigmatized by the accusation of having been an agent of the Argentine political police during the dictatorship and participating in the kidnapping and death of two opponents of the regime. The second had a successful career as a police officer when he became head of the Secretariat of Censorship during the Brazilian dictatorship.
There is also the case of Didi Pedalada, but that is another story.
This does not mean that the denunciation by former deputy Adriano Diogo, who headed the São Paulo Truth Commission, about the collaboration of Gylmar dos Santos Neves, a goalkeeper revealed by Corinthians, two-time world champion with the Brazilian team in 1958/62, is no less appalling. by Santos, in 1962/63, with the dictatorship.
Diogo was detained for 90 days at the Operation Bandeirantes police station, on Tutóia Street, for a sad irony in the Paraíso neighborhood, in São Paulo.
He says that he has often seen what is considered the greatest archer in the history of the national team in the corridors of the police station, including those where opponents of the regime were tortured and killed.
“The jailers referred to Gylmar as the ‘dispatcher of the DOI-CODI,'” Diogo told the column.
Gylmar had a small car agency and tried to legalize the documentation of cars used by prisoners, for use by the political police.
The activity ended up earning him a General Motors dealership in the Tatuapé neighborhood, through which Gylmar obtained permission to sell vehicles, Opals and Chevettes, tax-exempt to military personnel and delegates.
Diogo says that the use of GM’s Veraneio vans by the Brazilian political police and Ford’s Falcon cars by Argentina’s were part of the same collaborationist scheme.
Gylmar was the brother-in-law of deputy Ricardo Izar (1938-2008) and at least three sources from the Syrian-Lebanese colony, which both attended, confirm reports made by him about torture and even corpses they would have seen at the police station.
And why is it only now that everything comes to light?
Because Gylmar’s name returned to the news due to the conviction of his son, Marcelo Izar Neves, 55, to one year in prison, a sentence reverted to community service, for aggression and racial slur to a Jewish neighbor.
Marcelo, who owns boxes in 11 football stadiums, including those of the four big ones in São Paulo, had a disagreement with his neighbor in a condominium in Morumbi and shouted: “That’s why the Jews got fucked in life. Hitler was right, the race of you Jews is no good.”
The surprise caused by involving the son of someone with an untouched public image led to reports from people who were not surprised, among them the former deputy Diogo, who witnessed what other sources even thought was a conversation from the throat out, to show proximity to power.
It is not the first time, and I hope it will be the last, that the professional obligation takes precedence over the journalist’s desire and feeling.
Gylmar dos Santos Neves was my idol since childhood.
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