There were years, even decades, preaching against the existence of state championships. Since the days of Placar magazine.
At least for every four editorials he wrote, one was to call for the extinction of tournaments.
I particularly remember a meeting attended by the former president of São Paulo, Henri Aidar, who politely and affectionately called me a heretic for defending more space for the Brazilian Championship in place of what I called propeller planes against jet planes.
Many people never understood how I could consider Corinthians’ 1977 São Paulo title the most important in the club’s history and even then disdain the state ones.
Throughout the interior, I made enemies who called me an elitist for not wanting the big teams in the capital, and the one on the coast, to expose their stars in rickety stadiums and criminal lawns.
They did not accept the argument that those who defend the interests of the majority of fans cannot be elitist, because they came up with the counter-argument of the barn of players revealed by the little ones, etc.
Paulistas were angry to see their centenary championship being called Paulistinha, cariocas in the same way as the gauchos with Carioquinha and Gauchinho. Even funny, about the last two, is that when they read only the reference to their tournaments, they told me to call the São Paulo championship in the diminutive, because, as you know, fans are not neighborhood fans.
Well, what made me change my mind was the Flamengo game in Madureira on Wednesday afternoon (16) last week.
I had ridiculed the 1,009 witnesses present at Conselheiro Galvão’s stateroom — not them, but the number.
Behold, suddenly, EUREKA!
I learned that that afternoon, at exactly three-thirty in the afternoon, Arquimedes, taken by his father, Rubinho, began to watch the first football game in his short life when he was just 6 years old.
Archimedes soon fell in love with the maroon, blue and yellow colors of the Tricolor Suburbano, although he realized that he would be in the minority. Yes, because even among just a few 1,009 people it is possible, with some effort, to be a minority.
The reasons that light the flame of passion are unfathomable and there was little Archimedes to prove it.
More: there was born, in the cauldron of the Carioca suburb, a new fan who will attend stadiums, idolize their goalkeeper, the farm beque, the disruptive center forward.
Screw the crowded Maracanã, Wembley or Camp Nou.
There would be no Lionel Messi if there was no Ygor Catatau, the author of the 1-0 for Madureira!
Not even the perplexity of Rubinho, a fanatic red-black, named Rubens in honor of Doctor Rubis, a famous midfielder who shone in Gávea in the 1950s.
Yes, rare reader, rare reader: I do penance for so many columns in defense of the classics and against the presence of the little ones at the same table frequented by the great ones.
I give my hand to the paddle and promise never to make the same mistake again.
I defend the existence of state championships with the same ardor with which I defend the spelling reform.
The one that thus describes the move in which “the attacker stops to” make the goal, a pass, whatever team it is.
By the way, in relation to the wonderful spelling reform, I only criticize it for not having created the sign of irony, as there is the exclamation mark.
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