Athletico 100 years: Arcésio Guimarães, first president

“Once an Athletico, always an Athletico”.

It was with this sentence that Arcésio Guimarães ended a discussion between opposing wings dissatisfied with the creation of the new club on March 26, 1924, in Curitiba. The phrase, from now on, became the epigraph of athletic history, even though it was adapted to talk about other clubs in other places decades later.

Arcésio was the great-nephew of the Viscount of Nácar, born in Paranaguá. When he went up to the capital, he fell in love with Internacional, a club founded by his uncle, Joaquim Américo Guimarães. His cousin, Claro Américo would also be president of CAP in the 1940s.

From the first negotiations for the meeting of internationalist and American groups, Arcésio was the unifier, the patient, the peacemaker among his trepidatious peers. For these qualities he was acclaimed as the first president of Club Athletico Paranaense.

It is said that in his inauguration speech, he said: “As a sprout full of life, he must continue the trajectory of his former rivals, rivaling his adversaries and leveling up with them”. Said, done and overcome.

During his term, in addition to the beginning of the rubro-negra saga, he negotiated and extended the lease period for the Baixada land with the Hauer family.

He was one of the great men of his time: a pioneering journalist for Gazeta do Povo, councilor, president of the City Council, the Paraná Commercial Association and the Clube Curitibano. Above all, he was the right man at the right time to unite old antagonists around new colors and a new moral order: athleticism.